Page 88 of The Heartless Archer

“You will see that I can.”

She shook her head. “You will see since I have no heart.”

Bucking her hips, while drawing both her knees upward, despite the pain exploding in her upper body, she managed to tip the Sosye forward, throwing him off balance. Kekoa let out a grunt as he slid to her upper body and with her last strength she lifted her arms and pushed him off her.

Rolling onto their side she looked up at him as he gathered himself. She saw two versions of him swimming in front of her eyes, lunging at her.

“Shackle him, now!” she yelled. A low rumbling erupted around them, creaking like old wood. Long tentacles shot out of the ground, branches, and roots rising and winding around Kekoa’s body until he was imprisoned in a small cage.

“You cunt! Let me go now!” Kekoa started to thrash around, trying to cut at the roots with his knife but they were indestructible.

Slowly getting up to her feet, Noora tore a long strip from her shirt and wound it around her bleeding arm. She tied a knot securing it with one hand and her teeth, groaning as she cut off the blood flow. Because of him, she would have to wait until the end of the task to get it stitched. Her cheek still burned but ithad stopped bleeding. Nonetheless, it would leave an ugly scar. Maybe one day she could rank all the scars on her body, she did have enough of them to fill a whole paper of parchment.

She stumbled over to him, watching him struggle in vain.

“I ORDER YOU TO UNDO THIS MAGIC!” he roared in agony until she stopped in front of his makeshift cage.

“You want it tighter?” she asked and the branches moved in command, tightening around his body until he could not move.

“The moment I get out of this I will skin you alive, whore, I will cut open your body and stuff your stupid mouth with your intestines until they come tumbling out your stomach again!”

She raised her brows. “You have a very vivid fantasy. I do like the picture you paint, however it would be an awful lot to clean up. I like my things…clean and tidy.”

She focused and then a lone branch wound around the hunter’s neck. He immediately started to cough, groveling for oxygen. She slowly watched his face turn red, to blue, and finally to purple. Deep satisfaction tore through her at the sight of his veins, bulging across his neck, his pleading with her to stop, tears running down his cheeks.

“Please, please,“ he begged silently, his body starting to tremble. He was merely seconds from suffocating and he deserved it.

He was a cold-blooded killer, someone crazy enough to enjoy torturing other beings, no matter if human or animal. She remembered the way he tore through the flesh of that wolf, without hesitation and full of satisfaction. He would not hesitate—he did not hesitate to hurt her when he got her into his hands. But Noora was not like him.

She bent forward so his fluttering eyes could see her properly.

“You are lucky that you ran across me, witch hunter since you deserve death more than anyone I know. But you will notagitate me into killing you, you deserve to suffer through life more, waiting every damning day until your final court in front of the gods. They decide your fate and you better pray because right now it does not look good for you.”

With that, the roots eased off his air pipes, though still encircled his body. Noora looked at his relieved face as the colour slowly dragged down his face into his neck.

Without another word, she walked past him.

“Hey! You can’t just leave me here, untie me!”

She did not answer him as she traversed through the rest of the forest until she reached the border and stepped into the dreary light of the day.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the difference in brightness, the white snow painting a beautiful picture in front of her. The lake was lying right ahead, its surface frozen, imitating sparkling crystals. The few sun rays that broke through the thicket of clouds made the ice glitter in lilac, blues, and greens like opals.

She could not see Sören, nor Pika anywhere in sight, making her wonder how long she was inside the forest due to that bastard’s attack.

The snow crunched under her boots as she hurried over to the lake. On closer inspection she noticed a small wooden box right at the border of the lake and beside it…a bow!

She let herself fall to her knees in front of the box, her greedy fingers grasping the silver metal bow and the fitting quiver filled with a dozen arrows.

Her nails were caked with dirt so deep she feared she would not get rid of it in a few years.

Her heart leaped at the familiar weight and she threw both quickly across her shoulder before opening the wooden lid, revealing a pair of glinting white ice skates.

Without hesitation, she grabbed the pair and switched them for her warm boots, the latter she tied the laces together before securing them to her belt. It would be significantly harder to skate with the weight of the boots impacting her balance but she would manage. With a glance behind her, she made sure that Kekoa was not secretly on her toes. Noora did not know how long the roots would feel satisfied with the drops of her blood but she knew it would not be too long.

Without hesitation, she stepped onto the frozen water, taking a moment to rebalance her weight before she took off.

The few strands that escaped her braid flew in the freezing wind, slapping against her face without mercy as she skated over the lake, her eyes scanning the area. Either Sören and Pika were still stuck in the forest or they were already inside the mountains. She would not be surprised if Sören was still wandering clumsily in the forest, though she wondered why she had not come across Pika all this time.

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