“The knife belongs to me,” I raised my voice to state clearly. The clashing voices echoing throughout the glorious ballroom all came to an abrupt lull, everyone’s enraged eyes falling to bask down on me. The hard sole of my chestnut suede oxfords struck the light birch flooring, the shaken crowd before me clearing a direct path across the room from my location.

“Good, you all know your place. If any of you move so much as an inch toward that table, I’ll put you into the wall before you come close enough to see the spark of the blade,” not a moment after the threat was issued, my first volunteer stepped forward. The woman was only but four inches shorter than me, around five-eight, yet she crept behind me like a small fox, attempting to flip me over, clearly hoping to put me on the floor. When she swept her right leg out, taking my strength for granted, in an attempt to wrap it beneath me, I gripped her off-guard arm and pulled her across my shoulder. As she squirmed in my hands, attempting to free herself of my grasp, I threw her doll-like body in the direction of the onlooking crowd, a threat to whoever was plotting the next attempt. The limp competitor struck the wall as her fellow partygoers attempted to avoid her falling frame, now a dejected pile on the floor.

“Now, once again. The knife. It’s mine,” as the words slipped from my lips, my hand clenched around the handle of the blade, sending excruciating jolts of electricity throughout my now trembling physique. A single severed howl ripped from my throat as the power of the Charging Blade’s hold finalized, leaving my hand charred where the handle rested.