"Hey, Cissel, wake up! Wake up!"
A couple of hours after she had finally surrendered to exhaustion and slept, the territory had been so calm, the silence so heavy and peaceful, that the sudden jolt of sound felt like a lightning blow.
She was startled awake by loud, frantic shouts echoing outside the walls of her small outpost, the structure she had claimed as a temporary bedroom.
Cissel's eyes snapped open. Before she could even fathom the source of the noise, before her mind could strip away the fog of deep sleep, her instincts took over. Her hands blurred, fingers locking around the hilts of her daggers.
She vaulted from her bedroll, her body moving with a reactive speed born of a thousand life-and-death encounters. She lashed out, her blades whistling through the empty air in a series of defensive arcs, as if parrying a sneak attack from an invisible foe.
"Luke?!! What's going on?!!"
