Inside his mind, Ash screamed louder than anything. "No, don't hurt my daughter. Please run, sweetheart! Run now!" but no sound came out, his vocal cords had burned away completely.
"Damn it, my face! This is going to leave a scar, damn it! Who is this child!" the man fumed and walked closer.
Suddenly a coil of rope flew from the side, its loop opening in the air and falling right around Lyanna's neck. One of Jacker's men pulled the end of the rope that had been thrown over a wooden beam on the roof frame being repaired, and Lyanna's body was instantly lifted from the ground.
Elira saw it. A sound came from her but it held no shape, only a weak and faint murmur, and her already weakened body tried to rise, tried to move toward her daughter, but her legs would not obey.
Jacker wasn't looking at Lyanna. He was reloading his pistol, his face cold and looking downward.
Ash watched his daughter's legs kick, the small shoes that were her birthday gift, moving without pattern in the air. His eyes could not look away, Ash's eyelids were no longer there to help him close his eyes, and he had to watch everything until the movement of those legs slowed, then stopped.
Ash then looked toward Elira, toward his wife's body that no longer moved on the ground.
Darkness began creeping in from the edges of his vision, slowly toward the center, and the sounds around him seemed to grow distant.
"Damn it, four wasted months. How am I going to treat my cock when I get back," Jacker muttered while cleaning his pistol.
Then the darkness stopped. The blood in Ash's veins felt like it was boiling.
Jacker loaded his pistol, his lips still muttering indistinctly. Then his eyes shifted, glancing toward the post where Ash was tied, and his expression changed instantly.
His eyes went wide.
Jacker's men's laughter could still be heard at the front of the village hall when Jacker's eyes locked onto the post.
The chains had come loose. The iron links lay on the ground in an uneven circle, their ends still smoking. Ash stood in front of the wooden post that was still burning, his body upright, his head tilted slightly forward.
His skin was intact, however, cracks split across its surface from his neck down to his arms and parts of his body, an irregular pattern like dry earth that had fractured.
From within those cracks, a red light pulsed with a slow rhythm. Fire still wrapped around his body, but it wasn't burning him. As if Ash himself was the source of that fire.
His eyes glowed solid red, no iris visible, only the same blazing red as the cracks across his skin. His teeth were clenched tight, his breath coming out as thick visible heat vapor in the air.
Jacker's mouth opened for several moments before his voice came out. "Everyone on alert, damn it!"
The shout finally came, hoarse and not entirely controlled, and all of his men stopped moving at once. Faces that had been full of laughter now tensed as their eyes found the figure standing at the edge of the field.
No one spoke for several seconds. Ash raised his head slightly.
"ROARR!"
The sound that came from his mouth thundered from within his chest and slammed against the surrounding building walls until the wood vibrated. Jacker's ears rang instantly. Several of his men stepped back one pace, involuntarily covering their ears.
Then the cavity of Ash's mouth began to glow from within.
An orange-red light filled the space between his teeth, growing brighter, brighter still, until his entire face looked like a furnace that had just been lit.
WOOSHHH!
A blast of fire erupted outward, as if pumped from within by limitless pressure, crossing the field in a long straight line and burning everything in its path.
Three people in the front row had no time to run and were instantly engulfed in flames.
Panic erupted at once, a barrage of gunfire unleashed from every direction, the bullets striking Ash's body and falling to the ground like pebbles thrown against a concrete wall.
Ash raised one hand to cover his face, not from pain but from a reflex below conscious thought, and behind that cracked and glowing palm, not a single bullet managed to pierce through.
Ash moved.
His speed made it impossible for ordinary human eyes to follow, only the trail of heat left in the air showed where he had come from. His hand swung once and a man who had been standing was suddenly split in two. Fresh blood scattered across the ground following the direction of Ash's swing.
His fist struck another man in the chest, and that man's body was hurled backward at an unnatural speed, slamming into the stone wall at the edge of the field. Blood spread wide across the wall.
"Switch weapons!"
Jacker's voice broke through the panic. Several people ran toward the equipment crates near the aircraft, prying open boxes with trembling hands, and pulling out different weapons, longer ones, with blue muzzles that hummed low when activated.
Plasma weapons.
Five people knelt in a single row and fired simultaneously. Blinding bright blue beams split the air and struck Ash in the chest at close range, piercing through until the blue light exited from his back. Ash staggered, dropping to one knee on the ground, bright purple blood spilling from the hole in his chest and flowing onto the ground.
Several of Jacker's men cheered.
Ash lowered his head, his breathing audible and heavy. His hands pressed against the ground, purple blood continuing to flow, pooling between his fingers.
Then slowly the flow diminished and stopped.
The hole in his chest closed from the edges inward, tissue growing back faster, until all that remained was a stain of purple blood on skin that had returned to being whole.
The cheering stopped instantly.
***