Kevin’s POV
I watched with disgust at the corpses of the bastards lying on the ground. They were all dead and didn’t think that it was possible for them to die like that. Surprise was etched on the faces of some of them and I was amused.
What were they thinking? Ambushing us the way they were. They were ridiculous thinking that they could get an upper hand against us. The first time we had encountered them, we had been surprised by their presence and they had pulled a fast one on us but not anymore. We were prepared for battle and ready to give everything what it took as long as we were able to get home.
Immediately we had seen them, we crouched into a fighting position and covered our noses with handkerchiefs which we had gotten ready in case we meet them again. I was super glad I was prepared this time. With the wide berth we had given them at contact and the covers on our noses, they hadn’t been able to poison us with silver like before.
They had also sustained injuries from the previous battles and hadn’t healed like we had since their bodies weren’t as strong as ours and so were weaker in the fight. Their only edge was poisoning us with silver and we had stopped them from succeeding in that mission.
“Bastards,” Loki hissed and spat at the corpse of the group leader.
I smiled at his words. He had taken the words Right out of my mouth.
“I concur.” Liam nodded and kicked the body of the rogue lying next to him.
“Let’s go.” I said. “We have a long journey to cover if we want to make it home tonight.”
“I think this is the last of the rogue. We shouldn’t encounter any more of them, right?” Damien sighed.
I hoped. There was only so much distraction and delay that I could tolerate.
“I don’t think so too.” Ella nodded in agreement.
“Can we claw out the skin of these idiots?” Andre laughed.
Loki shuddered and winced in disgust. “I don’t want the blood of these people on my fingers anymore. It’s bad enough that I’m stained with a little. I don’t want to add more.”
“I don’t want to add more to.” Andre rolled his eyes. “I only wanted a payback for stressing us and want to see them have ruined skins in their afterlife.”
“Afterlife?” I snorted. “Do you believe that nonsense?”
“Maybe I don’t but I hope there is a hell where these bastards can burn forever. With the nature of the violence and evil in them, death alone is not enough punishment for them.”
I let out a gust of air, wondering if there was hell for sinners for the rogues-real hell and not the one we used in curses when we tell annoying people to go to hell. Andre was right. The rogues had to keep on suffering after death and get punished for their evil deeds in life.
“Where do we go now?” Sebastian asked.
“We go left.” I said after checking the map in my hand. We didn’t need to cross rivers or climb mountains anymore-we were done with that. All we needed to do was to walk over the bridge and then we would be at the border that leads to our hometown.
Home sweet home. I breathed in with joy not believing that we were almost there. It had taken us so long to get to where we were but we were finally there.
“Holy shit!” Liam cursed thirty minutes later.
I nodded gently, my eyes widening in horror as I looked at the mess before us, understanding perfectly why a naturally composed Liam had felt the need to curse. It was indeed shit.
“What do we do?” Ella asked.
I sighed, sensing the tension in her question. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do. My mind had gone on a rapid shutdown as I saw the new calamity before us. The bridge that led home that we were meant to cross over had collapsed and there was nothing but a huge chasm between where we were and where we needed to go.
There was no way we could jump over that huge gap except we wanted to fall to our death. Based on what I heard, the bridge on this open hole was strong and there could be only one reason that it had caved in and fallen into the gap underneath it.
The rogues. Those bastards must have anticipated that they wouldn’t win the battle and destroyed the bridge so we would all die here together even if we win the battle.
Sick fuckers. They kept on surprising me when I had thought I had them figured out. Anytime I thought there was no evil they could do again, they surprised me and did something beyond my imagination.
“Are we moving or getting stuck here?” Damien asked.
I exhaled and snapped my attention back to the present. They were right. We couldn’t stay here forever. We had to keep moving. We had to find another way to get home.
I brought out the map and sighed as my eyes roved over it. Ella must have picked up on the change of my countenance and the distress in my mood.
“Is there a problem?”
“There is no way that we can use to get home tonight.” I announced, my shoulders sagging as I let my hand holding the map fall in defeat.
Ella was ruffled. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “There are three paths on the map from where we are standing at the moment. One leads home through the bridge that is now useless. Another leads back to where we are coming from and there is one by the right that leads to nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” The men echoed.
I sighed. I was as confused as they were as well. “It says here-” I pointed at the map. “-that it is a road but it doesn’t say where it leads to. I’m not sure if it’s a path or another jungle. I’m not sure it’s safe for travelling since it wasn’t mentioned on the map.”
“Maybe where it leads to wasn’t mentioned because it wasn’t explored. Why would people go through the path when there was always a bridge they could go to? I’m sure no one found a reason to travel the path.”
“What do we suggest we do?” Loki asked Ella.
“I suggest we go through the path by the right and see if we can prove the map wrong.” She replied without hesitation.
I blinked. What she suggested was risky. “What if the path isn’t safe?”
Ella was undeterred still. “Isn’t it better that we move on than stay here and either starve to our death or wonder if the rogues would show up again?”
We both knew that the rogues weren’t coming back. They had destroyed the bridge that they could also come from and we were left here on our own. I didn’t want to go back to utopia town and start looking for a way to get Ella through their gate to exit, not after all that we had gone through and knowing that they were probably still searching for the escaped slaves in the town. I couldn’t risk Ella’s safety that way.
I made my choice. My face was grim as I turned to the men. “Let’s go.”