Liesa stood there, dumbfounded, feeling more stupid than she'd ever felt before. She had not just failed herself, as usual, but also most likely the human knight still standing behind her whom she thought for sure was shaking his head in frustration at her, but she didn't dare look.
In front of her about ten or twelve paces ahead, firmly planted in the three feet of snow was the elven platoon barking out in laughter at how easily she was humiliated by their Lieutenant, but somehow, it was not surprising at all.
Then the Lieutenant said, "Come to think of it, I've heard rumors about there being a young elf who got kissed by Death Itself at birth and lost her longevity…and you must be that elf. Judging by that mark on your forehead and those ravens at your feet, of course."
It was a magenta circular marking amidst her chalky light blue skin that Liesa had been bestowed and practically tormented her every time she looked in the mirror. The other elven soldiers behind him began to snicker and whisper amongst each other, and Liesa could tell they were taunting her as well.
Then the Lieutenant said something that made Liesa's skin crawl, "I can't help but wonder: what kind of reward would I get if I were to kill you and bring your head to my superior, along with the head of that human standing behind you?"
Shit, Liesa thought to herself. Here we go again. Not like this was the first time another elf had the same thought, and it was starting to get more annoying than it was alarming.
"Alright, let's get this over with," the Lieutenant said, and then he motioned his right hand toward her, signaling for the rest of his foot soldiers to charge forth and attack. They drew their swords, daggers, and bows ready to taste blood.
Liesa took a step back, and she reached for her dagger that was kept in the back pocket of her belt. She was never very good with it, but it was better than nothing because so many enemies were coming at her all at once.
While the Lieutenant and two or three of his foot soldiers went after Liesa, the rest of the platoon went for the human knight.
The Lieutenant swung his sword diagonally at Liesa, but she ducked out of the way and lunged forward while still crouched to strike her dagger into the Lieutenant's torso. She was hoping, even at this range, she wouldn't miss her target, despite how bad her luck had been in the past when it came to vanguard combat. However, she had to dive even more downward when she sensed an arrow heading straight for her, and it grazed her shoulder.
She landed on her stomach in the snow and slid forward a little bit. When she lifted her head, she saw that one of the elven foot soldiers was about to thrust his sword into her back. She rolled sideways to dodge and quickly got back to her feet, but as soon as she did, another soldier came up from behind and tried to stab her in the hip. But in that moment, she elbowed him in the sternum as hard as she possibly could making him drop his dagger, and she spun around and kicked him in the gut. The soldier fell to his knees, but then the Lieutenant took this opportunity to sneak up behind Liesa and wrap his arms around her neck, pulling her into a choke hold.
He ordered for two of the foot soldiers to start stabbing her, but as they approached her, she lifted her legs so high that she kicked the weapons out of their hands. Then she headbutted the Lieutenant in the face, his nose bled as the bones and cartilage broke. As he let her go and pressed his hands to his face to try and stop the bleeding, Liesa turned to face him and used her dagger and slashed the Lieutenant's head. Blood streaked from the slash mark and flew into the air as he stumbled backwards.
She should be surprising herself at how well she was holding her own against an entire platoon of trained soldiers, but instead all she felt was dread. It was the first time she had to use her hunting skills against her own kind, after all.
This is just self-defense… She didn't feel comfortable doing any of this, but that was what she kept telling herself.
All the while, Liesa was glancing a few times over at the human knight's plight and saw that he was unarmed. That didn't mean the human knight was getting hit, though. He dodged and evaded every blow the elven foot soldiers dealt. No matter how many swords or arrows came at him, he moved out of the way just in time with surprisingly swift speed, as he was keeping true to his word that he would not fight back. This made the elves furious and frustrated, but not a single one of their strikes made him want to draw his own sword that was slung around his waist.
He really isn't going to fight back?! Liesa thought to herself.
But as she turned back around, she was immediately met with the Lieutenant's face mere inches apart from hers. His head was bleeding on one side, and his expression was that of pure rage and evil with murderous intent. She had no time to react, and he punched her in the face so hard that she was knocked off her feet and sent tumbling over and over sideways a few times in the snow until the base of a tree trunk stopped her. Her back slammed into the tree trunk, and she landed on her side with the rest of her arrows falling out of her quiver and scattering beside her.
As she struggled to get up, she grimaced the new dark purple bruise on her face from where she was punched. When she finally managed to get back on her feet, she steadied herself by placing one hand on the tree trunk behind her and the other hand rubbing her bruised face. Her vision was blurry as she looked up at the Lieutenant as he was getting closer while dragging the tip of his sword along the snowy ground.
Liesa's knees felt wobbly and were about to give out under her when the Lieutenant reached her and prepared to thrust his sword through her heart. He screamed as loud as his lungs could let him as he lifted his sword and it pierced through armor and flesh.
Liesa prepared herself for the worst, but when she realized her heart was still beating—pounding in her chest, in fact—she opened her eyes again and saw the shadow of a red-cloaked figure looming over her.
The human knight was standing in between Liesa and the Lieutenant, with the Lieutenant's sword impaling his chest and crushing his heart. Somehow still standing, red blood poured out from his wound on both sides, and some of it splattered onto Liesa's face behind him. Then the Lieutenant pushed his sword deeper into the human knight's chest and the tip of the sword nearly touched Liesa's nose. The human knight was coughing up buckets of blood until his arms went limp and fell lifelessly at his sides.
A moment later, the human knight's entire body became engulfed in a fiery burst of flames as if by magic, which threatened the others' lives.
The Lieutenant quickly pulled out his sword from within the flames to try and get away from the intense heat, and the human knight was still standing. But through the red-hot fire, both Liesa and the Lieutenant could see that his arms were moving again and they reached for his sword, slowly pulling it out from its sheath on his waist. As the flames began to die down, they didn't go completely out but instead stayed burning on parts of the human knight's body and armor, offering him as a sort of defense. Also, the spot where he had just been gravely wounded was totally healed up as though he was never struck by a sword, but it left behind a slit hole in his armor over his heart and exposing his bare skin. Now the knight had a serious and angry look on his face, ready to strike back.
Liesa watched as both the human knight and the Lieutenant had a standoff once the Lieutenant realized what the human knight really was, and he said, "Oh? I see now… You've been blessed with the 'Phoenix's Rebirth'. Looks like I'll just have to get creative to defeat you, but I wonder: will you still revive if I cut your head off?!" The Lieutenant sounded nervous at first, but he tried to seem confident on that last remark with a smile.
But before he could take a single step forward as he planned to, the human knight had already made the first move, advancing more swiftly than the naked eye could keep up with. In one blink of an eye, he went from being ten feet away to mere inches away and he kicked the Lieutenant in the side of the knee, forcing him down the ground. Caught off guard, the Lieutenant stayed on the ground, baffled, long enough for the human knight to stomp one of his heavy metal boots onto the side of his head to keep him down.
"You call this a blessing?" the human knight angrily yet calmly asked the Lieutenant before delivering the finishing blow, "…It's a curse."
Then the human knight slit the elven Lieutenant's throat with his sword while he was still on the ground. His sword was also burning in the Phoenix's flames, traveled into the Lieutenant's wounded neck as the metal made contact with flesh and he too caught fire. The Lieutenant's entire body burned in agony and he screamed until his mortal being was reduced to nothing but ashes in the snow.
Liesa and the remaining elves in the platoon witnessed this as though they were spectating a horror show. The other elven foot soldiers, realizing their leader was dead, fell into disorder. Most of them scrambled around the immediate area, practically reading each other's minds to surround the human knight and attack him all at once. For even if they couldn't kill him, they could buy some time to escape.
So several of them raised their bows and aimed their arrows at the human knight and let them go simultaneously. But he swung his sword around and deflected all the arrows coming from all directions. Then he advanced, striking at the bow-wielding elves in various parts of their bodies, slicing up their legs, arms, and throats to the point of dismemberment. Body parts and blood scattered in midair until the effects of the Phoenix's flames burnt them to ashes, too. Soon it was only a couple of soldiers left. One of them made a desperate last-ditch effort to save himself by taking out a dagger from his back pocket and moving swiftly towards Liesa. He came up from behind her and stuck the pointed tip of his dagger at her throat.
When the human knight caught sight of this, the last elven soldier yelled at him, "Don't come any closer or she dies! I saw how you protected her from the Lieutenant just now, and I doubt her curse doesn't have the same effects as yours!"
The human knight froze in his place, and silence overtook the whole area. No birds chirping. No breeze in the trees. The air got colder, and the first flakes of flurrying snow began to fall from the sky.
"Okay, now here's what's going to happen," the elven soldier with Liesa as a hostage began making his demands, "I'm taking the little Death-kissed lady here with me. If I think you're following us, she gets here legs cut off. And you're going to stay right here and freeze to death while we—"
The human knight sighed while the elven soldier kept talking, and his breath puffed out like smoke in the frigid air. He didn't let the soldier finish, though, for he used the flames from the Phoenix that were serving as his new armor and commanded it to magically gather into the form of an actual Phoenix. It was larger than any ice bear Liesa had ever encountered, and it spread its flaming wings behind the human knight before quickly flying at the elven soldier, scooping him up into the air higher than the treetops. The soldier struggled to break free, flailing his arms and legs around before the flames engulfed him completely and his ashes fell to the ground below. Some of it landed on Liesa's and the human knight's heads and in their hair.
After all this, Liesa's legs finally gave out and she collapsed kneeling in the snow. She was still looking up at the sky where the Phoenix's flames was still soaring and circling above the trees. Then they heard a twig snap from within the tree line, and when they looked they saw the last of the elven foot soldiers trying to get away.
"Guess you're the last one," the human knight said quietly before commanding his Phoenix to go after the elf. The Phoenix swooped down and flew straight through the trees, burning them in the process, chasing after the one elven soldier who was running as fast as he possibly could. Half a minute later, from the distance, Liesa heard him scream in terror and she assumed he had perished.
There was nothing but silence then as Liesa sat in the snow, and she found herself staring at the human knight who was looking down at his feet. His arms at his sides, his sword in hand, and all the flames had gone from his armor, making him look as frail and dirty as she first found him. His head was bowed, his hair covering his eyes, but his hood had fallen off his head at some point earlier to which Liesa just now realized, and she noticed he had lush brown hair that spiked backwards. He had heroic noble sharp features, and if it weren't for the fact that he had just slaughtered an entire platoon of elves by himself, Liesa would've found him quite handsome in that moment.
For a while, nothing else happened as the flurries fell. But Liesa couldn't bear the silence anymore and felt she had to say something, and when she opened her mouth, the human knight suddenly collapsed forward and his face was in the snow in an instant.
Liesa still couldn't find the strength to stand, so she crawled on all fours over toward the knight till she was at his side. She tried shaking him by the shoulder with one hand, but he wouldn't budge. She feared the worst, then out of the blue, she heard a rumbling noise coming from his stomach. Then the human knight groaned, his voice muffled by his face in the snow.
"Um, are you alright? Are you…" Liesa finally mustered the courage to ask him, despite how awkward it made her feel, "Are you hungry?"
The human knight answered almost immediately, "…Hm-mm…" and then he passed out.
An awkward moment past, leaving Liesa questioning what she should do next.
But she couldn't deny her instincts. Liesa had always been one to never like being in debt with anyone. Ever since she was a little girl, she felt the overwhelming need and desire to pay back anyone and everyone the very minute she owed them.
Liesa took a deep inhale through her nose, her eyes closed, and then she said to herself, "He saved my life. Human or not, he saved my life."
Her legs were still quite wobbly, but she eventually managed to get one foot underneath her as she reached down to grab the human knight's arms and upper body. She lifted him up and over onto her back, and she maintained her balance even as her first few steps felt like she was going to fall with him.
"Okay, here we go," she said.
A few ravens sat in the treetops nearby as Liesa began walking forward with the unconscious knight on her back, his feet dragging in the snow and leaving a trail behind them, which was unlike Liesa at all. The ravens watched the winter elf girl make her way back to her cabin home, and a couple of them flew closely following her in the air to which Liesa noticed, annoyed at their connection via Death's Kiss.
"My life isn't fair…" she said to herself, still stumbling forward and struggling to stay upright with the weight of the knight's heavy armor on her back. She felt his breathing down the side of her neck, giving her the relief she needed that he was still alive and the assurance that she'd be able to pay him back because who can pay back a dead person?
Not only that, but Liesa also needed to know why he saved her in the first place. Humans and elves were currently at war, after all, so why would any human knight save her?