“Go get the lady out of the carriage, and be nice to her while yer at it.”
The handsome bandit’s yellow teeth shone through his sneer as he ordered the others about. The man had a square jaw and long, unkempt hair tied off in the back. His chin and neck could hardly be seen through his untamed beard. His arms were adorned with several old scars, and, in his hand, he held a large, curved blade. He was clearly the leader of the bandits.
Upon hearing their boss’s orders, the other bandits dismounted from their horses in unison and made a dash for the carriage. They tore the door open and ripped a terrified Lauren from her seat.
“Eeeek! Let go of me!”
Lauren resisted with all her might, but two men held her arms down, even as she twisted her body about in an attempt to wrench free. Two other men grabbed Rita and dragged her over.
The bandit leader yelled out to the men holding Lauren, “Better not rip them clothes when ya take ’em off! They’ll fetch us a nice profit when we sell ’em!”
One of the men turned toward the leader as he removed Lauren’s dress. “I can play around with ’er, right, Boss? We’re just gonna kill ’em anyway.”
“What’re ya blabberin’ on about, idiot! I’ve got first dibs, and you all get what’s left!”
Causdah’s expression clouded with indignation upon hearing this. “W-w-wait a minute! I betrayed them, so I should get to go first!”
The leader’s eyes lit up with anger at Causdah’s retort. Then, he rammed his curved blade coolly through the ex-guard’s mouth.
“Gyaugh!” Causdah made a gasping noise as the sword burst out of the back of his head. The other bandits smiled venomously as they watched him fall to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“I never planned to give you a share anyway,” the leader spat as he kicked the man hunched over on the ground. An awful sound erupted as Causdah’s skull cracked, his neck twisting around.
Lauren, who had been watching this all unfold, let out a short scream. A yellow puddle appeared under the young girl, now stripped down to nothing but her corset and drawers.
One of the bandits holding her took notice. “Looks like the li’l lady just gone an’ dirtied herself!”
Hearing this, the rest of the men broke out into crude laughter.
“In that case, I’d be happy to take them soiled undergarments off!” The leader stepped forward and pulled the soiled drawers off Lauren with a single tug. The men stared lecherously as Lauren’s damp, chestnut hair came into view.
“No! Let me go! Rita! Riitaaa!!!”
Lauren thrashed frantically to avoid the men’s gaze, kicking her legs about to get free. The leader ordered one of his men to grab her legs as he pulled down his own pants, exposing himself to her.
“Unhand her this instant! You know what they’ll do to you?” Unable to put up with these ruffians any longer, Rita screamed at the men even as they restrained her. Her efforts, however, only made them laugh harder.
“You best not worry about her,” one of the men holding her down responded. “You’ve got your own problems!”
He grabbed her servant’s uniform and began tearing it apart, exposing Rita’s underwear and breasts for all to see. After squeezing and pawing at her exposed chest, the bandit threw Rita to the ground.
“We’re gonna make sure you and the miss feel reeeeeal good. Gahahaha!”
Rita could smell the stench of the man’s breath as he laughed, pulling down his own pants. She could see Lauren out in front of her, arms pinned to the ground by two bandits, with another man holding one of her legs. The leader of the bandits leaned over her, about to push himself between the girl’s thighs.
Enveloped by the sounds of ear-splitting laughter, and with no one left to save them, Rita and Lauren could do nothing but scream and cry, praying to the gods to help them.
Then, a massive shadow fell across the bandits. A knight appeared right behind the bandit leader as he laid himself atop Lauren.
The knight was covered from head to toe in gleaming, silvery armor decorated in exquisite detail with white and blue accents. On his back was a billowing cape as black as the night itself, almost as if it had been ripped straight from the sky. His face was completely covered by his helmet, the only opening in his mask a pitch-black visor that obscured any emotion his eyes may have held. In his right hand, he held a massive longsword which emitted an eerie, azure light. He looked just like the type of Holy Knight one would read about in legends.
Rita couldn’t comprehend what had just appeared right before her very eyes.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the knight’s sword flashed, sending out a blast of light that seemed to slice through the air, right between the bandit leader and the other man holding Lauren’s leg. The knight took a large step forward and followed through with a horizontal slash, sending out another blast of light that disappeared between the two men holding Lauren’s arms down.
It was all over in an instant.
The top half of the bandit leader split free from the rest of his body. The man next to him, who had been holding Lauren’s leg, now ended at the neck, his head rolling to the floor and facing the setting sun. The men who had been holding her arms down were now missing half of their heads. Geysers of blood spurted out like fountains, spattering the grass around them, painting the already sunset-dappled scene an even deeper shade of burgundy.
The top half of the bandit leader tumbled down onto Lauren. She screamed as she frantically kicked it away to the side. The bottom half gushed blood like an overflowing well, forming a crimson lake on the ground.
The two men who had been with Rita—one of whom was still straddling her, his member exposed while the other held her down—finally realized that something was wrong.
“Wauugh! It’s a gh-ghost!”
It was every man for himself as the remaining two bandits scrambled to escape. However, the half-dressed man crashed back to the ground next to Rita as his legs tangled in his pants. The next thing Rita knew, the knight swung his sword down and impaled the man, leaving the man stuck to the earth like a skewered frog. The silver knight pulled his blade from the dead man and pointed it at the man’s escaping comrade.
“Wyvern Slash!” A deep, muffled voice echoed from within the helmet as the silver knight took a sudden step forward, swinging his massive sword in a horizontal slash.
It appeared to all watching that he had simply swung his sword in the air while the escaping man continued to run away. However, moments later, the man dropped where he stood, his body splitting into two halves, cut cleanly at the waist.
In the course of three blinks of an eye, the entire group of bandits had been reduced to mounds of flesh.
The knight gently shook the blood from his sword and slid it back into the sheath strapped to the back of his armor. He faced the two women, a dispassionate voice calling out from deep within the visor-covered helmet.
“Are you all right?”
The setting sun reflected off the silver knight’s armor, making it look like he was entirely enveloped in flames. Lauren and Rita completely forgot about their own state of undress as they stared blankly up at the knight.