Fantasy story part 2

I'm loving this.


As soon as they were a good half-mile away, horns sounded. “Get out of your houses!” people were yelling. “Take everything you value and can carry with you!”
“I see you’ve gotten your first taste of the world,” said a grizzled voice from behind the boy. A man had appeared from their hut, one who was far younger than the scars he bore made him appear. In the seven years of the war he had endured, his face had aged maybe twenty.
“Yes, father,” he said.
“Robert, it’s about time you learned that those stories I told you—“
“All true,” Robert whispered. He turned to look at his father. “Is there going to be a call to arms like there was when you were young?”
“It has already happened. While you and half the village were staring at the beasts, the Council had a meeting. Their hut was the first to catch.”
“Who’s fighting this time?”
“Every single person who is able. Men, women, even the children strong enough to lift weapons and do any good with them.”
“Me?”
“I think you’re ready.” Turning his gaze from Robert to the distant sunset, he continued. “I fought in the first war and barely escaped with my life. This time…I don’t expect to return.”
“Father, your scars!” Robert exclaimed.
“I can feel them opening. Those who put them there have returned, seemingly from the dead. It appears my second chance for glory has come.” His eyes widened and his face twisted in anger, which made the scars split even faster. Green blood started to drip out. “I won’t let them take our land like they did last time! They destroyed our houses, our hopes! Now look at us, ruined and broken as a byproduct of their constant thirst for more!”
“Who, Father? Who?”
“They call themselves the Ascended, for they were once human, too. That’s all I know for sure of them, except that their blood…is…”
“Green. It’s running down your face!”
“Yes. These scars are gone, the Ascended have been rewritten by history. It’s their curse, yet, for it means there will be ten times the number of soldiers on the battlefields against them.” In his eyes the firelight shone, turning them from their normal blue to a deep purple. The blood from the scars had reached his lips, so he licked some, tasted, and swallowed with a grin. “I remember feeling this way five years before you were born. I believe most people call it ‘bloodlust’. It’s in our bloodline, and you will be unstoppable in battle. Which weapon do you like the most?”
“Uhh…”
“I remember now. Your mother knew you had the flicker when she was pregnant with you. I remember it well enough, now that I’m thinking about it. The blood runs stronger in your mother’s side. Ask her, for it appears I’ll be training your sister in the Way of the Tiger.”
“What’s a tiger?”
“Imagine a cat. Now imagine it about fifty times bigger and that many times more ferocious and graceful. Orange, striped, and unstoppable on the battlefield. That is a tiger.”
“And what will Mother be teaching me?”
“Ask her. I don’t rightly understand it myself. You’ll catch on quickly, and then everything in your path will meet an explosive end. Let’s get out of here. Take some swords, though I know you won’t use them. Your mother will have all the things you need.”
Stepping quickly into the hut, they collected all they needed: the family weapons, and some supplies. All four left as one unit. Robert, carrying two swords, looked tranquil and resolute. His sister, three swords on her back, and an axe in each hand, looked eager and had the same shine in her now-purple eyes as their father. Their mother, wearing a robe she hadn’t touched in almost twenty years, had a half-insane smile on her face.