Free Web NovelChapter 19: The First Roar
"Hey, miss. Mind telling us which way to the red-light district?"
Only a few minutes later, a group of young men in plain clothes came around the corner of the alley.
They were dressed in plain black, their hair hanging in messy strands over their foreheads. As they walked, they took long, exaggerated strides and swung their arms wide, as if terrified someone might miss the fact that they were looking for trouble.
They drifted closer, every one of them wearing the same nasty grin.
Zera stopped.
"Uh..."
The moment the young men came up to her, she tightened her arms around Puff and took a step back.
Zera was not stupid.
They obviously were not asking for directions. That line was just an excuse—an excuse to block her path, close in on her, and toy with her while pretending they had a reason.
"What’s wrong, little miss? Don’t know?"
When Zera did not answer, the cocky young man in the lead took another step forward.
A smile hooked at the corner of his mouth. His dark eyes caught the slight tremble in Zera’s body, and the more she retreated, the wider his grin became, as if he was enjoying every bit of her fear.
Zera kept backing away with Puff in her arms.
"Sir..."
Her voice was very soft, but her hold tightened even further. Puff was tucked protectively against her chest, her tiny face pressed close to Zera’s shoulder. The little princess dress she wore was crushed into soft folds beneath Zera’s arms.
Zera did not dare relax for even a second.
She was afraid they would hurt Puff.
But after only a few steps, her back struck something cold and hard. Zera turned her head and realized she had backed herself against a black stone wall. Its surface was rough, damp, and chilly, cutting off every path behind her.
There was nowhere left to go.
"Please don’t come any closer."
Zera lowered her head. Fear trembled in her voice no matter how hard she tried to suppress it.
The young man was almost right in front of her now.
"Oh? Sorry, pretty girl. I just wanted..."
As he spoke, he raised his hand and reached toward Zera’s fair face.
Puff had been curled up in Zera’s arms.
Her eyes were still red, and the tear tracks on her cheeks had not dried. But the moment that hand came near Zera, her tiny body suddenly went tense.
First, she heard Zera’s lowered voice.
Then she saw the stranger’s hand reaching toward them.
That hand was not trying to hold her.
It was not trying to comfort her either.
Puff’s silver-white eyes locked onto it. The sadness piled up in her chest from failing to find Kael had not faded yet, but another, more direct emotion was already pressing over it.
She did not understand complicated malice.
She could not tell what the people in Blackrat Lane were truly trying to do.
She only knew that this person was getting close to Zera.
And Zera was scared.
"Grrraah!"
Puff opened her mouth and let out a low roar.
The instant that sound burst from her tiny body, the air around them seemed to tighten. Then a huge surge of force erupted from her mouth and shot straight forward.
It did not scatter.
It narrowed into a single line of impact and slammed head-on into the young man reaching toward Zera.
The smile on the young man’s face did not even have time to fall.
All he saw was the little thing in Zera’s arms suddenly lift her head. In the next instant, an invisible force struck his chest and arm with brutal power. It was not a fist, but it hit harder than one, driving from his arm into his chest and flipping his entire body away from Zera.
Bang!
His body crashed onto the filthy stone road and rolled twice across the ground. His sleeve tore open, and his arm struck the rough stone hard. Skin scraped apart, and beads of blood quickly mixed with dust along the edge of the wound.
He curled in on himself from the pain, clutching his arm and screaming again and again.
The other young men froze.
The smiles on their faces stiffened in place. One of them instinctively took a step back. Another stopped with his hand half-raised, the curse he had been about to spit out stuck in his throat.
Zera froze too.
She lowered her head and looked at Puff in her arms.
Puff was still clutching Zera’s clothes, her little body rising and falling slightly after that roar. She did not look at the young man sprawled on the ground. She paid no attention to the stares around them, either.
She only raised her head and looked toward the noisy, brightly lit building.
Then, in a voice still thick with tears, she cried out,
"Da...ddy!"
The call was very soft, broken up by the voices at the entrance of The Black Tankard, the tavern’s clamor, and the young man’s cries of pain on the ground.
Even so, it slipped through the half-open door and drifted into the hall inside, where lamplight and the smell of liquor mingled in the air.
"Aaaah! My hand! My hand!"
The young man on the ground clutched his arm, his shoulders shaking from the pain. The fall had scraped open his palm and forearm, and the pain burned upward from the wounds. Soon, the shock on his face twisted into furious rage.
The street stayed quiet for a brief moment.
The people who had been watching with amused smiles all fixed their gazes on Puff in Zera’s arms.
A tiny thing in a little princess dress, her eyes still red from crying, had actually knocked a grown man flat with a single roar.
The sight was so strange that even the locals of Blackrat Lane, long used to trouble, paused for a moment.
Zera held Puff with her back pressed against the cold black stone wall, her arms still locked protectively around her. She had been closest when that surge of force burst out from the child in her arms. In that instant, she had clearly felt the air tighten first, then explode outward from in front of Puff.
That was not a sound an ordinary child could make.
And it definitely was not power an ordinary child should have.
"You two little bitches!"
The young man gritted his teeth and pushed himself up from the ground.
Pain had burned his eyes red. He looked down at his scraped arm, then lifted his head toward Zera and Puff. His expression turned uglier by the second. Rage washed away the shock from that earlier moment, and with it went the caution he should have had.
The corner of his mouth twitched, revealing sharp teeth.
"I’m going to break every limb you have. Then I’ll drag you away and make sure you regret ever setting foot on this street. Once my brothers and I are done with you, we’ll sell you off to some noble freak who likes collecting pretty little things!"
As soon as he said it, several passersby frowned.
But no one stepped forward.
That was the kind of place Blackrat Lane was.
Someone got unlucky.
Someone screamed.
Someone got singled out.
As long as the trouble was not aimed at them, most people would simply take one step back, clear the road, and watch from somewhere safe.
Several mercenaries stepped aside too.
They wore combat gear and carried weapons at their waists, but not one of them was willing to get involved over a maid and a child.
To them, this kind of thing was no different from a tavern argument.
Just another small problem that happened every day in Blackrat Lane.
