The place was unfamiliar to Ursula, yet the four-thousand-year-old church toward over the ashes of a broken city, an old sight to her eyes. She couldn’t help but notice the juxtaposition between the peaceful images within her refuge and the bloody raid without; it caused her head to pound. There was no time to appreciate the ancient beauty. People were dying, and Ursula had to act fast.
Jason saw her stance stiffen, readying to dart into the open and fight the raiders head-on. “Don’t do it,” he said.
She shook her head. “I can’t just stand by and watch.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “Stand by and watch today, and you’ll have a chance to make it right tomorrow.”
She pulled away. “By tomorrow it will be too late for someone. I have to do this now.”
“Ursula, this isn’t the mission, and you’re not ready. It’s too dangerous.”
She took off. Ursula didn’t care if Jason had her back or not, she had to take action. She scooped up a few children from the streets and placed them in safer places. She circled around and took out two Oppressors with her scimitar before using their blasters against three more. Jason sprinted past Ursula and she smiled when he punched an Oppressor and shot another.
The two of them were the only Resistors in the area, up against twenty Oppressors and dozens of the Oppressed to keep out of the crossfire. Ursula and Jason were just supposed to gather supplies, not stop a raid. But Ursula knew the raiders’ hunger had no bounds, even their hunger for life. Now she’d gotten them into a deadly skirmish, and she appreciated the significance of Jason’s refusal to let her fight alone.
One by one, Oppressors fell, and soon twenty more replaced the original set. Ursula had trained with the Resistors for months, but now, it wasn’t enough. She shot one Oppressor and kicked another before ramming him into the unstable remains of a house. The falling stones impressed new bruises and scratches on her arms. She turned to the open street just in time to save a crouching young man with a shot of her blaster.
If only the Oppressed would join the fight, she thought. As she dodged the attack of another raider, she could hear her father’s words from long ago: “They embrace too much light, never enough darkness. They’re afraid of it, just as the Oppressors fear the light.”
Ursula’s blaster overheated, burning her fingers, and she threw it away. She took hold of a crystal from a deserted merchant’s stand and used it to reflect the raider’s blaster shot back at him. “That’s… what you get… for being afraid of the light,” she said breathlessly.
Five enemy fighters surrounded her at once as she lost sight of Jason. Ursula stood her ground, swaying in pain, clinching her scimitar. She searched the faces around her. The civilians she’d saved stood by and watched, some hugging their loved ones. Her head pounded and her arms dripped red. She dropped her weapon, fell to her knees, and put her hands behind her head. “Survive to fight another day,” she whispered.
The Oppressors put Ursula in chains and forced her to her feet. She scanned the faces around her desperately for Jason. Had he abandoned her? She refused to believe it. He always said it was better to return with reinforcements. After all, it’s what he’d said when she jumped into this mess, wasn’t it? He would save her. She just had to hold on.
Beth Freemont 