The river had long since forgotten its original color. What once ran clear now moved slow and thick, stained a dark, ugly crimson that clung to the water like oil. Blood pooled along the banks, swirling lazily around half-submerged bodies piled against rocks and fallen branches. Some were missing limbs with arms torn away, legs severed clean or hacked until bone jutted white through ruined flesh. Others were intact, if only technically, faces frozen in expressions of fear before the inevitable death and before it finally claimed them.
They had been sent with one purpose which was to actually delay him. The one who fought without pause, without mercy, without hesitation according to what the grounders had told one another of course.
The one who did not flinch when steel met flesh. The smiling butcher and true to that name he had done just as it suggested, he had butchered those that were snet after him.
Jason stood ankle-deep in the river, unmoving. The last grounder drifted past his boots, water rippling gently around the corpse. A sword had been driven straight through the man's skull, lodged between his eyes cleanly. His face bore the expression of someone who had wanted to protest but didn't get the chance before the intrusion into his brain.
Jason exhaled slowly while grounding himself. He reached down, wrapped his fingers around the hilt, and ripped the sword free with a wet sound that echoed faintly off the rocks.
"Tch."
Blood ran freely down his arms, soaking his sleeves, dripping from his fingertips back into the river. His body was marked with cuts along his ribs, a gash across his shoulder, bruises blooming beneath torn fabric. But none of it mattered right now.
The real damage sat deeper.
An arrow wound just below his collarbone, one he hadn't dodged in time because he'd been busy driving steel through another man's chest. He'd torn it out moments later, snapped it clean, and buried it in the throat of the next unfortunate grounder foolish enough to charge him.
It would heal later, right now, there was no time to waste. Jason turned, water sloshing as he stepped away from the bodies, and vaulted up the riverbank in a single smooth motion. He landed hard at the edge, boots digging into damp earth. Pain flared briefly through his muscles but he ignored it.
The camp should've been reached by now, If not already under attack.
"Damn it," he muttered, and broke into a run.
The forest blurred as he accelerated, feet barely touching the ground as he broke into a full on sprint. Trees rushed past him in streaks of green and shadow as he wove through them instinctively. Then the ground dropped and he leapt, hands catching bark, boots slamming into trunks as he began moving upward.
He launched himself from branch to branch, momentum carrying him forward as the canopy swallowed him whole.
'Move faster.'
After several minutes, he landed hard and skidded to a stop.
Jason crouched and pressed a hand to the forest floor.
Tracks, too many infact. Boots and horse tracks. All of it leading straight back toward camp.
Then he noticed something else that. A separate trail cutting off in the opposite direction.
"…they split up?" he muttered.
He took off again, following the main trail until it abruptly thinned down. The deeper he went, the clearer it became: the horse tracks vanished entirely, leaving only a concentrated set of footprints pressing toward the camp.
Jason slowed.
"That's you," he said quietly. "Tristan."
The rest had peeled away. Why? He didn't like unanswered questions but right now, priorities mattered.
He surged forward again, his heart hammering as the thought clawed at him: 'Please let the traps hold. Please let Bellamy keep them pinned down.'
Then, Jason halted instantly as he heard the sound of metal scrapping stones a distance away.
The forest ahead dipped sharply, the terrain forming a shallow ravine. There were Jagged rock walls that rose on the other side. At its heart sat a cave-like formation that looked dark and narrow.
The noise came from there. Jason shifted his grip on his sword and stepped silently toward the edge, his eyes narrowing as he stared into the darkness.
'Grounders?'
Jason moved inside slowly, each step carefully not to make too much noise and attract attention. The air changed almost immediately and became alot cooler and damp with the smell of earth and rot. Water dripped somewhere deeper within, the slow plink… plink… echoing faintly along the narrow passage.
He hugged the wall, shoulders brushing jagged rock as the tunnel curved inward. The darkness pressed close, forcing him to rely on instinct more than sight.
A dull, flickering orange glow spilled across the stone ahead, dancing against the walls. Firelight. Jason slowed even more as he perceived a smell that came along with the light. It smelled thick, greasy and unmistakable like roasting meat.
His nose wrinkled, 'Are they… cooking?'
That alone was enough to put him on edge. He edged forward, peering around a rocky outcrop, and what he saw made his blood run cold.
There were figures clustered around a low fire, their bodies hunched and twitchy, skin pale and scarred beneath ragged armor and torn cloth. Their attire was stitched hides, bone ornaments, jagged metal scraps hammered into place without care. Their posture wasn't disciplined like grounders.
"Oh… shit," he thought, it's the repears. He instinctively shifted backward, weight already moving to retreat then, one of them reached out.
A reaper's hand extended toward the fire, his fingers blackened with soot and blood, and lifted something long and unmistakably human
Jason's eyes widened as he saw what it was. 'A… leg?'
A human leg looking all charred with the flesh peeled back where it had been roasted too long. Muscle glistened in the firelight. Bone jutted cleanly from one end.
The reaper bit into it and Jason froze. He had seen limbs torn from bodies not an hour maybe an hour and a half ago. He had made some of them. Bloodshed, dismemberment, death… those were things he understood.
But This? This was something else. The casual way they ate it. The sounds they made. The way the others watched, waiting their turn.
Barbarians. No… He exhaled silently.
Calling them monsters is an insult to the grounders. Then his mind shifted gears.
Wait…
'Grounders and reapers hated each other. That much he knew. Jason glanced down at himself and he was still wearing the grounders armor and weapons.
The camp wasn't far away from here. A few minutes at most, if one moved fast. Slowly, he looked back at the gathered reapers.
There were at least forty of them at least. A devious smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Well," he thought, "isn't that convenient."
The reaper with the leg leaned in for another bite then a stone whistled through the air.
Crack.
It struck the reaper's skull with such brutal force that the bone gave way with a sickening sound. The man collapsed instantly, leg falling into the dirt beside him.
Then, chaos erupted and the repears snarled and spun, weapons raised, eyes wild as they searched the shadows.
That's when they saw him. Jason stood just beyond the firelight, half-shrouded in darkness. With a sword loose in his right hand. A small pebble in his left, casually tossed up and down his palm as if he were bored.
"Oh, sorry," he said mildly. "My hand slipped."
The reapers hissed and Jason tilted his head, eyes flicking briefly to the fire. "Also… quick tip? That's an extremely unhealthy dinner."
"Low fiber. High… you know. Cannibalism."
Then he smiled, "This is the part where you come after me."
They screamed and ran at him. They surged toward him all at once and Jason waited just long enough.
As the first reaper closed the distance, Jason turned sharply and flicked the stone in his left hand. The pebble struck the reaper's eye with horrifying precision, punching straight through and lodging inside the skull. The body dropped mid-step, collapsing in a heap.
And then he ran. Boots pounded against stone as he sprinted down the tunnel, the reapers howling behind him. Their rage was palpable now, he had killed one of their own. Two, technically.
'Good,' he thought. 'They won't let this go.'
He vaulted over uneven ground, dodging protruding rocks and weaving through the narrow bends as the cave spat him back into the forest.
He broke through the treeline and kept running, the sounds of pursuit following close behind.
"Hang on," he thought grimly, pushing harder. "Just hang on a little longer."
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