The world returned to Pheo slowly. First as a dull ache in his limbs, then as the gritty sting of the sand in his mouth. He opened his eyes to see one of the burnt corpses staring at him.
"What the hell?!?" He shouted out, scrambling to get away. As he continued to regain his consciousness, the laughter in the background became clearer and clearer. "I figured you would put down that tough act of yours."
Once Pheo finally got back to his senses, he saw that Adam was with him in the cave, watching him. "You knew?" He asked him, making him laugh.
He went to him and tapped his chest. "Your heartbeat gave it away." His answer confused him. "You can hear that?" It would be impossible for him to hear someone's heartbeat, especially if you consider how far he was from him.
"If you don't believe it, then don't. It's only going to bite you back, not me." Adam told him. It wasn't that Pheo didn't believe him, it was that he didn't know the extent of his power.
So far, it seemed like Adam was superhuman. His existence made Pheo wonder just what his power was, and how strong could a power be.
"What happened compared to last time?" Adam asked him. "There seems to be more corpses than last time." He was sitting on top of a pile of dead bodies, all of them from yesterday's commotion.
"People were after me, I had no choice but to burn my home down." Pheo wasn't sure whether Adam could be trusted or not, but he had no choice.
The bandits were unsure whether he was dead or not, and until they saw his dead body, they would continue to look for him. He stood up and started to look for things he could still use among the burnt debris.
"So what made you come here?" Pheo asked him, unsure about his purpose. "I saw smoke over the horizon. Funnily enough, it led me back here."
Although he was in a disoriented state, he still remembered the path to their hideout. Pheo wanted to go back there, to take revenge on them. If he wanted to live life peacefully again like before, he needed them gone.
Adam watched as Pheo went and gathered items from the junk piles. "What are you doing?" Pheo laid and organized all the things he could use, his mind already formulating strategies as he wore gloves. "I'm preparing for my revenge."
"A kid like you taking revenge on a group of adult bandits? Sounds like a pipedream." Adam doubted him. "Don't mistake luck for skill, it'll only lead you to your downfall." His words were sincere.
They didn't get through to Pheo though, his mind was too focused on that night. The pain he had endured through the storm and the image of the bandit leader turning his back on him lingered.
"It was nice seeing you again Adam, but I don't have the time to welcome you." He wrapped everything he had gathered into a sack and went to the entrance.
Remembering the events yesterday, he began to track the way back. On his way, he had to walk irregularly. The spear that had pierced his leg would take at least a month to heal. He would have liked to wait for it to heal, but the bandits wouldn't let him have a break that long.
He knew that in a direct confrontation, he would lose without a doubt. Pheo had to use guerrilla warfare, using indirect ways to kill them. In the battle he was about to get into, he had to rely on his brain.
"How far are we going?" Adam asked him, snapping Pheo out of his train of thought. "You were following me?" He had thought he was by himself. After all, it was his fight, his revenge.
"You wasted my time by getting me to go back here, so I might as well see what you're up to." Adam told him. "I'm just trying to get rid of some bandits" He answered, trying to shake him off.
"Some bandits?" Adam repeated, "Are they the same ones that attacked me?" Pheo nodded, "I'm heading to their hideout, so it would be better if you head back where you came from."
He wanted to be sneaky with his approach, someone as big as Adam would instantly give him away. He continued to follow him however, "Do you think you can do it by yourself?" He asked him.
Pheo struggled to answer, he wanted to say he was sure but his heartbeat would say otherwise. "I'm sure that after this, they would think twice."
"Do you need my help?" Adam asked Pheo, making his eyes light up. Adam was someone who would easily destroy their camp within minutes. But he wasn't sure about his intentions, or what he wanted.
Most importantly, Pheo wanted revenge. Not the type of revenge where they end up dead, he wanted to make sure that he did it with his own hands. But with the outcome uncertain, he still needed his help.
"Only if I need it." He replied bluntly, he didn't want to seem like he was dependent on him. They continued on until they were looking down upon the enemy encampment.
Pheo measured the distance the sun was from the horizon, judging that they had only an hour until sundown. He laid flat behind a ridge, the same one he had climbed to escape.
He made a small fire with the items he had brought, using it to heat up a few things. "What are you doing now?" Adam asked him.
"I'm preparing," He said while wrapping the sling around his hand. "I'll be infiltrating the camp, could you stay here and watch?" Pheo needed to take advantage of his small body, bringing Adam would only expose him.
Adam looked at him confused before replying, "Okay." Pheo waited for some things to heat up before he began to store it in a pouch and slowly approach the camp.
He went into one of their tents, seeing their food storage. There, he got out one of the things he had brought, fine grains of crushed nightshade seeds. He went to the water supply and mixed it in. Compared to food, water was a bigger necessity.
Soon, you'll be the ones to feel drugged.
Pheo then made his way to their motorcycles, soaking the engines in alcohol. He made sure that the liquid all connected to each other before burying the hot charcoal he brought beneath them. It would only be a matter of time before the cool winds would do the work for him.
Before he made his way back, he saw that there was a scorpion's nest nearby. Pheo quickly dropped a few pieces of charcoal down before running back to his fire. He sat down and waited, paying close attention to what was happening at the bandit's camp. The sun began to set and the wind began to pick up, giving birth to dust devils.
"Did you kill anyone yet?" Adam asked, he wasn't sure what Pheo was doing. He seemed confident in his actions, yet he saw that after all that work, nothing had happened.
"About to," Pheo answered him. "Just waiting for the signal." He told him, still paying close attention to the bandit's camp. "A signal? From who?" Adam thought that Pheo was living alone in that cave. "From me." He said before an explosion came from the camp.
Embers from the hot charcoal made their way to ignite the alcohol. The flames then made their way into the gasoline tanks, causing the bikes to explode. He quickly grabbed the stones he was heating up and placed them in a pouch. Pheo quickly slid down the ridge, hiding himself among the chaos.
As he went down, he could see the effects of his actions. The panicked bandits ran for the water, only to realize that their body wouldn't listen. They were suffering from the nightshade's effects, bringing dizziness until their legs would eventually give out.
Once they fell to the ground, the aggravated scorpions would attack. Knowing that the scorpion nest nearby was filled with deathstalkers, it would cause them intense pain and fevers. Having all those symptoms stacked together, it would be close to a death sentence.
Pheo ran with the smoke the fires caused, using it as cover while he shot burning stones at the bandits. With the state the bandits were in, hitting them was just like target practice.
By the time the fires had burned out, the camp was silent, only the sounds of crackling embers could be heard. The scorpions were preoccupied with the corpses, saving the meat for later.
Then Pheo saw something through the smoke, a figure of a man approaching. The leader was walking towards him, armed with a curved blade. "I have to admit, you really are creative with the way you fight."
"But quick wits could only get you so far down here, kid. Out here, it's power that decides who survives." He told him, his eyes glinting with anger. The leader looked fine, as if the previous events hadn't happened.
Before the leader could get any closer, Pheo loaded one of the rocks to his sling and got into motion. The pouch with a hot rock whistled through the air, with the bandit leader moving slightly to dodge.
Pheo jumped back into the smoke, using it as cover to hide while he looked for an opening. "Do you think you can sneak up on me, boy?" The leader asked, a smirk on his face. "I've been in this desert long before you were even born. I can feel the sand breathe."
His grip tightened on his sling. Pheo always had the weapon of surprise by him in the fights he had before, but this time the enemy was well aware of him. Would he be able to fight on equal grounds with someone who has powers?
The fight started fast. Every time Pheo moved, the leader pivoted away from his aim as if he knew. The leader lunged towards him with the curved blade, surprising Pheo as he barely avoided getting cut.
How?
The smoke felt like it did nothing, as if it weren't there at all. Knowing what has happened so far, Pheo tried switching tactics. He began to drag his feet deliberately, kicking up plumes of sand in odd rhythms to mask his real movement among fake steps. The leader paused for a heartbeat, confused by the sudden changes.
Bingo.
Pheo let a sling stone fly, this time at a loose panel on a supply crate beside him. The crate tipped over, spilling metal scraps into the sand. The sudden scatter of impacts made the ground sing with false signals.
The leader's head whipped the wrong way. Pheo closed in, low and fast, and cracked the sling's leather pouch against his jaw with a whip-like snap. The bandit staggered back, dazed.
But he recovered quickly, crouching low with his hands pressed to the sand. His grin returned. The smoke was running thin, soon he wouldn't have to listen anymore to find Pheo. "You may have figured something out, but you can't hide forever."
He didn't intend to. He took a deep breath, then stomped hard on the sand three times, evenly spaced. The vibrations lured the leader forward like a moth to flame, but Pheo wasn't there.
He had looped some rope around a nearby tent pole earlier in the fight. Pulling it now, the rope yanked the pole loose, collapsing the tent. The falling canvas and heavy wooden crossbar crashed down the leader, pinning him down.
Pheo walked up, the desert wing whipping around them. "You're right," he said quietly. "You can't hide forever," he told him, crouching down to get closer to him. "But you can always fight back."
"Not always, kid. There are things in this world that no matter what, you can't fight against," the leader told him, his words this time not harsh but sincere. "Fair fights are for fools who want to lose with dignity. I prefer to win without a grave to mark it."
Pheo blinked at him, dirt and sweat mixed on his face from all the fighting. "Why are you so scared to fight fair?" He shot back, voice thin but steady.
The leader's smirk didn't falter, but something colder slipped into his eyes. "You think I was born strong? No. My brother was. They came into the world with more power in one finger than I could muster in my whole body. I trained everyday, repeating the same movements until my body couldn't stop shaking."
His hand flexed, the air shimmering faintly around his fingers. "So I stopped trying to fight fair, started to fight my own way. But no matter how much I tried, you can't beat what others were born with."
Pheo's grip tightened. "Sounds like you just got tired of trying, got tired of searching for a way. You couldn't make it in the end, so you gave up." He couldn't help but likened the bandit's story with his own.
"But there was always something telling you that it was possible, wasn't there?" He told him. The leader's jaw tightened, his fighting spirit still in his eyes. "That voice doesn't matter." He said, his tone low, almost dangerous.
"Hope's a cruel thing, it keeps you chasing a finish line that isn't there. Sooner or later, you learn to stop wasting your breath on races you can't win. You just didn't live long enough to realize it yet."
Pheo didn't move, even though his legs were trembling from exhaustion. "Or maybe you just didn't want to run anymore because you were scared of losing again." He said, the words coming out before he could stop them.
Pheo's eyes then landed on a corpse holding an axe, the same one that was supposed to end his life yesterday.
He pried it free from their fingers, being barely able to lift it up with both hands. He dragged it towards the leader, its heavy side leaving a trail behind as he walked.
The leader didn't need to look to know what was about to happen, he could hear it coming. "I can't believe everything I've built up came crumbling down because of some kid."
"That's because this kid never gave up." With great effort, Pheo lifted the axe above his head before swinging it down. The leader's head was cleanly cut off, rolling off to where the wind blew.
As he looked up to the sky, he could see that the sun was rising. "It took that long?" Pheo fell to the ground, the sand being oddly comfortable enough to sleep on.
Even when he knew that the scorpions were nearby, he couldn't help but go to sleep. "How did you manage to do this when you let your guard down so easily?" He could hear Adam's voice before he succumbed to slumber.