She couldn't catch her breath as she had been running for almost an hour, sweat dripped from her face from the sugar her body was burning. Frustration evident in her features as she wondered if there was any end to the dark tunnel she was in. She fell to the ground as her left leg hit a tree log on the way. Her breasts bounced back and forth as she tried to catch her breath.
She stared at her leg as she sat on the ground. The terrible rush of blood oozing out made her want to scream but she knew she couldn't.
Forcing herself to get up from the floor, she crawled to a nearby tree as a blockage to the enemies that might see her.
Tears filled her eyes as she remembered what had befell of her village. She lost her parents and her entire kingdom to a worthless war of greed. The memory of her house being burnt to ashes played in her mind like she was watching a movie.
She desperately wanted to continue running but her legs didn't let her. She was the only survival of a kingdom burnt at war and she still had swordsmen chasing after her with well trained horses.
Her heart started panicking when she heard the footsteps of horses coming near her. How could they have reached her so easily? Would all her efforts to escape go to complete waste? She hissed in frustration as tears of pain fell from her eyes.
It wouldn't take any more than five minutes before the horsemen found her. She was going to die and join her ancestors wherever they were. Such a worthless way to die without being avenged by anybody.
A single horse and a horseman stopped at the tree log that injured her. Nessa held her breath in fear as she quietly prayed to not be discovered since she wasn't more than six feet away from the log.
The horseman jumped off the horse with a silent thud, glancing around the woods like he was searching for prey.
He walked with confidence to the direction of Nessa who stopped breathing completely from fear.
She quickly got up to continue running, not minding the presence of the horseman and the throbbing pain in her left leg. The horseman stared at her funny attempt to escape before he said in a dominating voice, "STOP!"
Nessa turned to look at him before she fainted to the ground from shock.
****
Nessa's P.O.V
When I woke up, I first noticed that I was cold. My eyes are finding it hard to get open because of fatigue. I was lying down on a very hard bed, and the bed's hardness made me realise well too soon that I wasn't at home.
"Where am I?" I asked myself, my eyes slightly closed as I tried to make out my surroundings by feeling. My hands landed on a bedsheet that smelled of vinegar like it was washed recently. Next came the pain on my left leg, it came so suddenly that for a moment I thought I had a leg fracture.
I finally opened my eyes to look at my leg and discovered that it was tied with a cloth. My eyes widened the moment I saw the room I was in, it was two times bigger than what I had at home but it was simpler.
The room had enough space for a dozen horses to sleep, it didn't have a chair in it like the one I had at home. It was also painted with a black colour and when I looked at the right side of the wall, I saw a sword wrapped up in a black scabbard.
Then the pain of reality hit me. I was looking around a room in which I don't know the owner of. The last thing I remembered was being in the woods and trying to escape from the horsemen chasing me. But I turned back and then.... what?
My heart suddenly got filled in pain when I figured out that I might have been caught by the horsemen. There were probably not going to kill me at once, they'd starve and flog and use my pain as an entertainment to them. They'd make sure to kill me slowly so that I'll never want to reincernate even if I'm given the chance to in heaven.
Then I looked at my dress, I opened my mouth in awe when I saw that I was putting on another dress, differient from the black and pink gown that I had been wearing when I was captured.
A tear drop fell from my eyes when I realised that I must have been raped. I was only twenty-three and I was still a virgin before now that I'm sure I was raped. I wanted to end my life, I wanted to try my best to get off that bed and look for a rope to hang in the ceiling so I could do what I knew would end all the pain.
But then, just as I was considering standing up, the door to the room suddenly got open and a figure of about 6ft and five inches tall walked in. I froze in fear when I saw that his face was masked and he waked to my direction with so much confidence like he was stronger than Godzilla.
The world spun in my imagination like I was going to vanish into thin air. I couldn't breathe as my oxygen suddenly stopped working and my heart started beating twenty times a second.
A voice in my head asked me why I was shifting back on the bed and my back suddenly touched the wall. *Why are you scared?* The voice asked. *Didn't you think of commiting suicide five minutes ago? Why not just stay still on the bed and wait for a quicker death?*
The figure which I guessed was a guy because of his masculinity finally reached me on the bed and he said a word so quiet that I almost missed it.
"Beautiful."