Hard-earned Freedom

Chapter 1a - The Boy and the BlackBird

I walked along a beaten path, covered head to toe in dried blood, sweat, mud and Grimm dust, the clothes on my body shredded to pieces and armed only with a longsword on my back, secured by various leather straps cobbled together into a harness, which pulled and tugged on my body backwards as tree branches whacked back into the sword and made the leather straps chafe, angry red popping up in strips on the skin under the leather. It was irritating, but it was a far better sight than a desert. In the desert, all you could see was sand and sand and sand and sand and sand and sand. There was no water, no firewood, food came in the form of skeletal little lizards and at night the cold froze the sweat soaked into my clothes. There were also constant bloody overgrown scorpions trying to stab me. Forgot what they were officially called, King Prowlers?

I pushed away another branch in front of my face, flinching when it whipped back and cut my cheek. I dabbed at my face with my hand, which was covered partially by a leather glove, though the ends of the fingers had been torn off, a side effect of a Grimm bear thingie trying to bite my fingers off. I pulled my hand away from my face and hissed in annoyance when I saw a spot of blood, wiping the blood dripping down my cheek with the back of my hand and continuing onwards through the brush with a variety of curses about my situation. A black bird flitted above me through the branches of the trees, perching on a branch and looking at me intently with its malevolent red eyes. I glared at it and kept on trudging past the black bird, stopping and sitting heavily on a fallen tree trunk. The bird hopped closer and cocked it's head to the side slightly in an infuriating way, not flinching when I growled at it, instead hopping around me to my left, squawking at me and flitting to another fallen tree trunk. I glared at it for a few minutes before picking myself up and spitting out a profanity to the bird on the way past. It flitted in front of me again, leading me on through the jungle.

It seemed like an eternity ago, but I used to have a happy family on a farm with everything on Remnant that I had ever wanted. My little oasis. My mother and father, Delta and Alpha Kenna, had four children, Beta, Sigma, Epsilon and finally me, Omega Kenna. It was loud, a bit rough, but fun. My fingernails were always blackened from gardening and tending to the crops in our garden during the day. At night, my siblings and I would play with each other. It was either wrestling with Sigma, being read books by Beta and/or Epsilon or being taught how to defend myself and the things I loved by my dad. When we went to bed, we would all cuddle together, you know, conserve heat and all that. I lived like that for 17 years, then all that was taken away from me when Raiders came through the area. Being the crude, violent savages they were, they decided to have a field day at our farm and looted the house, killing everyone inside. I was outside, but the Raiders cut me down from behind before advancing on the house. I was incapacitated from my wounds as they burnt my oasis to the ground and rejoiced at the needless destruction so when I came to, my childhood was ashes, scattering into the desert with the wind. There were no bodies to bury, no memorabilia to keep except a partially burnt scarf that my mum had worn on her trip to Atlas, Beta's favourite ribbon, Sigma's combat pants, leather gloves that "tough gal" Epsilon had once worn everywhere and the longsword that my father had helped me forge and taught me to use.

I swore right there and then that those Raiders would pay for what they had done. I even bound my promise by cutting my hand open and spilling my blood into the sand. But first, I needed power. I needed to become a Huntsman. I started wandering in a random direction across Sanus, hoping that I would stumble into one of the fabled academies. two out of four of them were situated on this continent, so unless I walked in between both of them, I should have been alright. I didn't take into account the Grimm that wandered the no-mans-land in between Kingdoms. Giant snakes and scorpions and falcons kept attacking me during my journey across Sanus, seemingly drawn towards me like some sort of beacon. It was stupid and more than once I had to run away from the things when more than one showed up and started ganging up on me. I trekked my way across the desert until I got to a forest, where a black, red-eyed bird was watching me, following me as I made my way through the jungle.

And we're now up to our current situation, where I was following the bird instead of the bird following me. At around sunset, it would fly off into the distance, leaving me to settle down up in a tree somewhere, before reappearing when I got up and was ready to leave, leading me further into the woods. Where, I don't know, but it's still humiliating, taking directions from a bird. After who knows how long, the murmur of people talking and cars driving and store bells ringing grew louder, bringing unexpected tears to my eyes. I had forgotten how nice it felt to have people around you, even if they didn't give two damns about you. I stumbled towards the city, collapsing in front of a few passers-by's, blacking out after hearing them gasp.