The orphan’s desperate cry was soon joined by the wailing of another.

“EUUAAAAGH!” the young Master LeBaron shrieked as he let the axe slip from his grasp. A searing agony ripped through his hands as they suffered the rebound of the force he’d exerted. Duul and his younger companion looked on in shock as Bram fell back against a tree.

“My arms!” he shouted as he hugged himself with the mangled limbs. His groans and cries drew his attendants to his side, and the orphan was left alone to confirm what she had felt: like the steel boots before it, the axe had caused her no pain and done her no harm. She watched in awe as that blessing extended itself to her festering wound, which was sealed and healed over by a golden light before her eyes.

Duul hastily unstrapped Bram’s gauntlets and pulled them off to assess the extent of the damage. To his horror, it proved far worse than he’d anticipated: the flesh of Bram’s hands had taken on the color and consistency of steaming black gruel, bubbling up and popping like plague-infested boils. He and his companion recoiled from the sight, but the disgust of the latter was quick to turn to rage.

“What’ve you done, witch?!” the younger attendant shouted at the orphan as he turned and drew his sword. He brandished it threateningly, bearing down on her with murder in his eyes. “To hell with superstition! You die here!”

The orphan scrambled away to escape him, but he only increased his pace. As he raised his sword, she reflexively raised her once-wounded arm to defend herself. Just as before, her limb proved mightier than steel, and a mighty clang pierced the air as the young attendant was repelled as the young Master had been.

Unlike the Master, the attendant managed to keep hold on his weapon, for his pain was far less severe. But that small victory proved to matter little; in the next instant, instinct seized the heart and mind of the beleaguered urchin and pushed her to press her sudden advantage.

Overwhelmed by a storm of desperation and fury, she wasted no more time wondering at the strangeness of it all, instead rushing forward and thrusting herself against her latest assailant. She carried him several meters before they crashed together against the ground, whereupon she straddled his waist and delivered a fierce blow to his face.

She punched him another time, and then another, striking and screaming in abject rage until she was left punching a crater into the ground where a head had once been.

Unsatisfied, she turned to bashing the torso itself, raising both fists and bringing them down against armor that proved entirely ineffectual before her unnatural might. Bram watched horrified as his pitiful victim victimized his friend’s remains. Trembling, he stepped back.

“Young Master…” uttered Duul, himself transfixed by the violent display. “We must-”

“Demon!”

Bram shrieked the accusation before his surviving attendant could finish his warning, then wasted no time turning tail and bolting off toward the stream. “She’s a demon!” His fear let him ignore for a time the torment that wracked his hands as they dripped burning black pus upon the grass and leaves.

“What madness is this?” muttered Duul, whose curiosity compelled him to linger a moment more to watch the brutal display of unearthly wrath. But as the orphan’s fervor faded, he, too, backed away to avoid becoming her next target. He soon turned and ran to join the fleeing fool who had awakened immortal fury.

Naught but a pair of legs and sword caked in viscera remained by the time the orphan’s energy was spent. She fell back against the ground, her heavy breaths rising to the canopy above.

As she lay there, she lifted her hands before her face. Her weak and wiry limbs had afforded her little in all her life: a few coins here, a scrap of sustenance there. Staring intently at them then, though, she noted an intermittent glint of golden light following the course of her blood through her arms.

There was strength in them now: strength to terrify a warrior, to humble a highborn youth. But her racing mind passed only briefly over the thought of the two men she had frightened into flight, and she spared not a second thought this time on the strangeness of it all. Instead, her thoughts settled on a feeling that she had never known before.

Power.

It was in her flesh and in her bones. It created a pleasant swell of pressure in her chest. It elicited a lightness of mind and heart that gave the unkempt urchin a sense of satisfaction that no scant meal ever had. It forced levity into her features, pulling her chapped lips into a hesitant smile and softening the usual sharpness of her hungry violet stare.

She lay there for several long minutes to bask in the first true victory her hands had ever taken. And for the first time in all her memory, the loveless orphan laughed.