Volume 2

Chapter 1 :: The Emerald Rose

“How is your tea today?” Alise asked, her voice so quiet that it was almost impossible to hear over the sound of my heart pounding in my chest. She sat at a table nearby her cottage, a tea cup in her left hand while she sipped at it gingerly. The outfit she had chosen was a light pink dress that started at the neck and went all the way down to her ankles.

The dress itself was loose, and had a bit of a frilly nature to it. If someone had told me that one of the most infamous legends of the past, the greatest of warriors to ever exist, would wear a pink dress I would’ve laughed at them. Over the last six months Alise continually demonstrated to me that she did not ever live up to her legendary status.

“It’s fine!” I yelled to her in response, staggering back away from a powerful swing of Skara’s left fist at my face. The cup in my left hand contained a nice tea, it had a soft flavor which allegedly went well with all sorts of crackers and treats. My teeth gritted, jaw clenched while I stepped forward and delivered a powerful punch toward Skara’s stomach.

The tall man took the blow and shuddered, then laughed as though it had tickled. “Not bad, but you’re still holding back!” Skara told me while he shifted his stance, right elbow dropped toward my skull at a horrifying speed.

Overcalculated is the easiest way to put what I did next, as my body surged so far back that the distance between us grew to more than twenty feet. My feet slid on the slick grass, spring had come and decided to drown us on an almost daily basis as of late. The sheer momentum of my backward leap skidded me another two feet before coming to a full stop.

“Oh come on,” I muttered while carefully holding the tea cup in my left hand. On the plus side I hadn’t broken a cup in a few weeks, a sign according to Alise that I had improved considerably.

“You coming back or do I have to come get you?” Skara called out to me, while he laughed. He wore no shirt, his muscles slick with sweat and bulging from the exertion of the workout. The weapon he so favored had been left near Alise, mostly so he wouldn’t try to cut my head off.

Alise continued to sip at her tea, while she casually looked at a pile of papers on her table. Even if there was a strong breeze the papers tended to stay there, as if some magical force compressed them down against it. The small things were what made me realize how strong Alise was, the way she could step into a room and fires would light. The way the leaves never fell on her during fall, or how she left no footprints in snow or mud.

A deep breath inward, then a slow exhalation came next. My mind focused on what was needed and the surge of power slowly slipped throughout my muscles, the way the world ran started to slow. Without seeing I already knew that my left eye had turned a crimson color, a warning sign to the others that my power was boosted. Right leg muscles bunched up beneath the baggy pants I wore, then with a shove my body hurtled through the air back toward Skara.

Alise stopped me at that moment. One second she had been seated while casually reading her papers, and the next she was in front of Skara catching my right fist with her left hand. The cup she had been holding was on the table, the tea within so still that it seemed impossible she had placed it down a split second before.

“Bad!” Alise said, as she smacked me with a rolled up paper in her right hand. Skara who stood behind her had backed up in surprise when Alise popped up, though he maintained a cool look on his face.

“Ow!” I cried as I lifted up my right hand to try and ward off the paper. While it was only paper Alise had enough power to break my bones with it if she wanted, so each smack felt like a hammer.

“You would’ve killed Skara with that attack,” Alise chided me, while she glanced backward at the tall man. “Even if he’s all muscles and no brain you can’t use your full power against him, you know that.”

During the scolding she had not stopped smacking me, and it reached the point where I began to use my left hand to ward off the blows as well. The cup that contained tea became a potential victim of her attacks, yet somehow she avoided striking it no matter where it was moved to. The tea inside, however, had spilled all over the ground.

“And don’t waste your tea! You know we don’t have a lot of money!” Alise said, her normally airy voice loud enough to sound regular. Money was a sore subject for her, as she disliked looking for charity from anyone in her past.

“Can we get back to the spar?” Skara asked, while he wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead. He grinned that foolish wide grin of his at Alise, the woman he had continually strived to reach for the last six months. Foolishly since she mostly ignored him, treated him like a slave and considered him a weakling.

Alise paused at that question, her paper lowered and the strikes came to an end. When my eyes blinked automatically she was already gone, seated at her table again. “No, go clean up and then get ready to teach the kids,” Alise ordered him from her chair. “Taryn and Shorty should be back soon.”

A twinge of a smile showed on my face, one that Alise noticed though Skara did not. He only had eyes for the warrior woman, and without a moments hesitation he turned and walked away toward the dormitory. The weapon remained near Alise, she had not returned it to him in months, though her reason for banning it was never explained.

For a while I simply breathed in, my blood pumped too strongly and the world still felt a bit too slow. Mental concentration was the only way to control my power, if the concentration wavered during the heat of battle than I was likely to murder someone on accident. “When do you think I’ll be able to master this?” I asked of Alise, my eyes closed.

“Perhaps never, perhaps tomorrow,” came the mysterious reply. It was not what I had sought, and she knew it.

With a dejected expression on my face I could only open my eyes and walk to the table Alise sat at, before unceremoniously slumping into the chair across from her. “How long did it take to teach Taryn?”

“Whatever my idiot child has told you he is still learning,” Alise informed me. She shook her head a little which caused my attention to wander toward her hair. The odd way that the colors came together, mixed and seemingly shifted. Red and white, sometimes there would be a hint of pink that matched flawlessly with her dress, at times there was the color of blood.

A soft chime sounded that was so unnoticeable that for the first few months I had never been aware of it. Alise did not stiffen, though I couldn’t help myself from doing so at the alert of someone incoming. My head turned toward the main gate of the orphanage, an easily defensible location which required passing through a wooden tunnel.

On top of the tunnel were two children who were not too far off from my own age, one of which was a girl named Saris. She was perhaps one of the best with the crossbow, a fact she wasn’t afraid to boast about whenever the discussion of skill came up amongst the kids. When she noticed that I was looking she smiled and waved, to which I responded with a wave of my own.

The fact that she looked back at me meant they already knew who was coming, and the alert was merely to let Alise know someone was here. A few moments later two people walked through the tunnel, each lugged along a large sack which contained food which had been purchased at the nearby city.

The man on the left was a shorty fellow, he was not altogether impressive and his face had started to show signs of aging. Grey hair had begun to sneak onto his scalp, though he still acted as spry as the day I met him. Shorty paused, pulled out a small rock from one of his pockets and threw it at what seemed to be a random direction.

The little kid he hit jumped out from the grass, to me they had been impossible to detect thanks to their suit and training. The outfit was designed to emulate the surrounding foliage, something that required time and patience to make. The little boy who was perhaps nine or so visibly looked depressed after being tagged by Shorty, and turned to walk toward the dormitory.

“Looks like he’s taking Shorty’s class again,” I commented to Alise, who merely chuckled in a quiet and almost dainty way.

To say we had all taken well to living at the orphanage would be an understatement. Skara had found that he thoroughly enjoyed training children how to handle a sword, as well as coordinating their physical education with some of the senior kids. Shorty in turn ended up working on training the ones who wanted to be operatives, lookouts and scouts. While Skara was a bit gentle with the kids Shorty was brutal, he knew firsthand what would happen if you were spotted on the battlefield.

Whereas I had not really helped in the slightest. Instead all that happened was that people gave to me, Alise gave me training in how to control my abilities while Skara gave me a willing partner to fight against who couldn’t handle my maximum strength. Requiring me to tone down my strength, to manipulate it to the right level during the heat of a battle became all the more easier to pull off with his help.

Then there was Taryn. The man who walked with Shorty had his hood up, hiding away his face from the others around. Whenever I had asked about why he did that he never told me, and Alise asked me to leave the matter alone. However I knew quite well how he looked beneath that hood, the silver hair which was cut short which rippled gently in the breeze. The green eyes that always looked serious, sometimes dangerous and could send a chill down my spine. The fact that he was not altogether handsome, a common looking fellow who could blend in well with others.

Alise coughed lightly, a cough which reminded me to stop staring at Taryn. I sighed, before turning toward Alise and placing the cup of tea on the table. It was filled with tea even though I had not requested it, and yet still the tea cup went to my lip and I drank from it. “Thank you.”

Light footsteps alerted me to the arrival of Taryn, a quick glance to the side and I realized he had come quite close to the table already. He threw the sack that was on his shoulder off to the side, at one of the oldest kids who had come up to welcome him back. “Mind taking care of that, Phil?”

“How was the city?” Alise asked of her son, while she calmly read her papers.

Taryn lifted up his hands and pulled back the hood, revealing all his features to everybody. Why? Why did he hide away under the hood? “The city is in a bit of an uproar, apparently someone important had stopped at a local inn and was asking for directions to somewhere.”

“Oh?” Alise responded, though she didn’t really seem to care either way.

“Do you know where to?” I asked, while I sipped at my tea. The warmth of it was as always a reassuring presence, and the smell made me want to smile.

Taryn unhooked the scabbard on his left hip, the sword being placed gently down on the table next to the tea set. In most circles putting the weapon on the table would be rude, though I already knew he was merely returning what he had borrowed to his mother again. “No, I didn’t really care either way. There was some talk about trouble to the south-west as well, mysterious happenings. When I pressed for details the most I got out of it was the word vanishings.”

Alise put her cup down on the table and looked at Taryn. “Vanishings? Mmm, we might need to look into that. Did you and Shorty do a good job completing your task though?”

Taryn smiled at her, then pulled out a small leather pouch. He placed it on the table, the jingle of money sounded from within. “Shorty managed to net us eight coins, apparently he’s becoming a legendary. I think training the kids is sharpening his skill.”

The pouch vanished, though to where I wasn’t quite certain. Alise openly smiled, though, while she looked up at Taryn. “That’s wonderful, it’s always great when friends get ahead in life.”

The chime sounded, an alert that caused all three of us to look toward the gate. A second chime carried across the breeze, a noise that made my body tense up. A third chime occurred, a noise that caused Taryn to reach for the sword and put the scabbard back onto his belt. Even I had begun to rise up from the chair at that, it was not a good sign. If a fourth sounded…

There was only silence, though the tension had not stopped. Four chimes was the sound used for an attack, three meant the person coming carried weapons. Two meant the person coming was a complete stranger, while one meant there was someone coming. Five chimes, according to Alise, meant everyone needed to run away. It had never been used, and according to Alise so long as she lived it never would.

A carriage slowly rolled up along the pathway through the tunnel, the carriage was lead by two horses that looked almost extravagant. The driver was hunched over, he had a large battle axe that rested on the seat next to him while his face was scarred horrifically. The way the scar ran from his lower lip all the up to his left eye made his whole features distorted, and permanently angry looking.

When the carriage came to a stop Taryn started to walk over toward the vehicle, while Alise asked me to sit back down. My mind raced though, the carriage was in no way cheap looking, in truth it reminded me of many from my youth. While Taryn approached it the door opened and a single man stepped out, his clothes were black and white.

He was a butler and his name was Vargos, he had long dark green hair which was permanently pulled back into a ponytail that went down to his waist. With the slightest bit of a bow he offered up one hand toward the carriage door, toward a person who sent a chill through my body.

A thin hand came out from the darkness of the vehicle, a dark purple glove that covered all the hand plus a bit of the arm. It lightly touched upon Varos’s own, then out of the carriage came a woman who wore a dark violet dress. Her dress was in no way designed for showing off, as it modestly covered her body and only slightly showed off her features. The shoes she wore were the same color violet, heels that probably proved hard to use on the moist grass.

“This is going to be fun,” Alise murmured from where she sat, while she smiled toward me. “Don’t interfere!”

The woman who had emerged from the carriage had black hair that was cut short, it was stylized in such a way as to frame her beautiful face. The features of her face were sharp, while her skin color was a refreshingly warm hue. Makeup had been applied in minute quantities, enough to accentuate without over-exaggerating. About her neck was a necklace with a silver chain, the jewel that hung from it was an amethyst that was easily the size of an eyeball.

She had no weapons, she had not spoken a single word, she had not done anything except get out of the carriage. All of that and yet still my body stiffened in fright, I had the urge to scream out to Taryn to run yet the words didn’t come. Alise wished for me to stay out of it, and that meant if I tried to speak she’d probably knock me unconscious before a single word emerged.

Taryn walked up to the noblewoman and placed his left hand openly on the handle of the sword at his hip. He looked at the woman, noted how she looked and nodded his head toward her. “Good day,” he told her, though he did not bow. “I believe you have come to the wrong place?”

“Vargos, did this little cur just talk to me without first offering a proper introduction?” the woman asked of her servant, while she stared down her nose at Taryn.

“Yes, my lady,” the butler told her, he had straightened up after the noblewoman stepped from the carriage, and then taken up a place to her left and behind her.

The noblewoman sighed, it as not a happy sound and she tsked loud enough that it was audible at the table. It was a noise that made me wince, a noise that reminded me of many mistakes of the past. “Dear me, child perhaps you should start with your name, then explain why you are being so rude to me?” she asked in a steady tone.

“I’m Taryn, and I am not a child, so perhaps you can explain why you are here before I boot you out of this place?” Taryn asked, his distaste for the woman so obvious that even the children who watched were shocked.

“Why is he always like this?” I asked of Alise, while I shook my head. Every time a stranger showed up at the orphanage Taryn scared them away, sometimes by punching them until they sobbed and took off.

“Because he loves everyone, Liliana,” Alise informed me. “How would you feel if some random people stepped into your home without warning?”

To be fair that was not a good question to ask me, I was accustomed to random people showing up at my house. Prior to training with the Legion I had spent a good deal of time entertaining guests for my parents who often didn’t want to talk to them, yet still had to in the end. Such was the horrid life of the politically important.

“I’ve come to take a child with me,” said the noblewoman.

The worst possible choice of words had been picked, most likely on purpose. Taryn in regards to fighting was probably one of the strongest warriors that I had ever encountered. In a straight up fight against Skara he would obliterate the man with minimal effort, and even if I pulled out everything at my disposal he could still best me. He had been trained by a Disciple of the God of War for most of his life, and was also part God himself due to his heritage.

That man heard those words and there was no kindness nor mercy anymore, he stepped forward and sent out a punch with such shocking power and speed that the air itself quivered. The ground beneath his foot broke, an imprint left by his boot in the soft dirt and grass. Every child who saw that punch screamed out in horror, because it was a punch capable of disintegrating a skull.

The punch was stopped by a single finger, the right index finger, of the woman. She looked past Taryn and toward Alise, head tilted to the side quizzically. “Go right ahead, but don’t damage the property!” Alise called out in the loudest voice I had ever heard her use. Even when Skara had been caught peeking on her naked she hadn’t yelled that loud.

Taryn’s eyes showed his confusion, not only from what his mother had said but how the woman had stopped his attack. She lifted her left hand and slapped it out at Taryn’s face in a slow swing. So slow that he had ample time to lift up his arm to ward off the seemingly weak attack that was incoming.

Taryn’s body spun around while his arm nearly cracked in half, his mouth opened as a squeak of pain emitted. “What the,” was all he could muster up before the noblewoman gripped the back of his neck with her thin fingers. Up into the air he was lifted, and then a moment later his entire head was smashed hard into the ground.

It didn’t take Taryn long to recover, he had faced nasty opponents before and so when he surged up from the ground via pushing off of it with his hands nobody was shocked. What made it a bit shocking was that he easily used too much strength and sent himself aerial for a few seconds, then landed on the ground five feet from the noblewoman.

Taryn started to pull out the sword that was at his hip, his eyes continued to show the confusion he had felt initially. The blade never cleared, a right index finger pressed against the end of the handle. The left hand came up and slapped Taryn hard across the face, hard enough that his body lifted from the ground.

He hit the grass and soil rolling, his body tossed easily ten feet to the side from a mere slap. The noblewoman watched him as he tumbled, there was no laughter in her eyes but a mere hint of sympathy. The butler still stood near the carriage without any surprise on his face, while the driver of the carriage had opted to start eating a cheese and cracker meal.

Taryn stood up, though he obviously swayed due to a lack of balance. His face was bruised and he looked altogether completely overwhelmed by what had happened to him. The idea of even pulling out the sword had not crossed his mind again, instead it seemed he wanted to simply stand up straight.

The noblewoman casually started to walk away from Taryn and over toward Alise and I. Her movements were graceful, steady and offered no belief that she was in any type of hurry. Her hands came together in front of her, left hand grasped by the right gently. When she reached the table she smiled down at the both of us, while she inclined ever so little. It was not a bow, but it was a sign of respect to at least one of us.

Alise smiled at the woman, she had no issue with showing that she enjoyed what had happened. Taryn had as of late been acting arrogant due to his extreme capabilities in a fight, so it didn’t take much thinking to understand that Alise was happy someone had put him in his place. I, on the other hand, did not smile but rather was forced to say something I didn’t want to say.

Everyone in the entire orphanage had started to gather, Skara had even walked over to support Taryn while Shorty stared at the entire event without concern. It was probably due to the fact that he knew firsthand how capable Alise was, and since she had not made a move the stranger was therefore not a threat.

With all of the orphanage’s eyes on us I was forced to stand up from the table, and then casually pull out one of the chairs for the noblewoman. With a quick step back there was then a bow, deep and respectful toward the woman before me. When I straightened back up I smiled, in truth I was happy to see her but at the same time I knew it meant the fun times were over.

“Hello mother.”

 

Chapter 2 :: The Fun Trip Home

Alise, Esmeralda and myself were gathered at the table outside of the cottage at the orphanage. Nearby Taryn had been assisted by Skara in standing back up, and then walked away toward the dormitory. Some of the children who watched were scared, but thanks to the older kids the situation hadn’t degenerated. They had caught on to the fact that Alise was friendly with the stranger, much like Shorty had long before anyone else.

The carriage was where it had been parked with the butler standing rigid near it. The driver had gotten down from the seat and stretched, then started to jog in place. Vargos, the butler, looked in my direction and for a brief moment there was a smile. He was the favorite slave of my mother and one of the people who had helped raise me from childhood.

My attention was drawn back to the table when my mother started to speak. “I didn’t realize you were watching over my daughter for me, Allie,” she said in a comfortable, soft tone of voice.

It caused me to blink my eyes, then tilt my head a little to the side. Allie? “So you two know each other?” I asked. Alise had never explained her past as a disciple, and how she knew my parents names. I had assumed it was merely a working relationship with my father, or that Mathias had told her everything.

My mother looked at me and shook her head ever so slightly. “Allie and I have known each other since shortly after you were born. She’d stop by and check up on your father from time to time,” she explained.

“Plus she was fun to spar against, not many people can fight at Esmeralda’s level,” Alise pointed out. She sipped at her tea, and then put down the cup before picking up some papers. “Lily showed up about half a year ago and hasn’t left since, for more reasons than I’m sure she’ll admit.”

Esmeralda looked at me, and then a slight smile appeared on her face. “Still, why exactly was your son so adamant in acting like an idiot? If it had been Van he probably would’ve gutted him.”

“It’s a fault of his personality,” Alise admitted, before she sighed in frustration. “Thankfully you came along and helped show him that he’s not all powerful. I’m the only person locally who stands a chance against him, and I’m not exactly rolling in coins so I can’t afford a merc.”

A little bang noise came when my mother hit her fist against the table. Given what she had done to Taryn the power behind that was like a light breeze in comparison to a hurricane. “I’ve offered you money before! But instead you ran away on us and set up some orphanage and didn’t tell us anything.”

Alise waved her hand toward my mother, as though dismissing her comments. “I won’t touch the blood money of Mathias, thank you. Plus I figured if I told you where I lived you’d want to come and fight me, or drag your daughter along and have her train under me or something.”

The look on my mother’s face said that Alise had been accurate in her assessment, as she simply looked down at her tea cup dejectedly. “Still you could’ve told me about my daughter,” she mumbled like a little girl. It was a face and attitude I had never seen before in my mother, one that made me wonder just how heavy Alise’s influence was on her.

“If I wanted you to know where I was I would’ve told you, mother,” I reminded her. My tea cup was full but for the first time in a while I had no urge to drink from it. “Because you’re going to drag me off somewhere and force me to do some sort of training that I don’t want to do.”

As though my words were fuel for the fire in her heart my mother’s back straightened up, her seating posture fixed in a matter of seconds. She looked toward me with a bit of heat in her eyes, before she spoke in a tone that was scathing and quite intimidating. “You will do what I tell you because I am your mother, and if you don’t like it you can go get yourself killed after you turn twenty.”

“Emmy,” Alise said. A single word, yet one that made my mother instantly calm down and even start to blush a little. “Lily is a fine daughter, don’t be so harsh on her. So have you only come to find her?”

“Ah, that,” Esmeralda said. She glanced back at me, then turned her face toward Alise. “Back during her childhood I needed to pull a few strings and make a few promises in order to get her enrolled in the Legion, without being a legionnaire.”

“Ohhh,” Alise exhaled out. She smiled, then lifted up her tea cup. “Now they’re calling in the debt?”

“High General Sciroco wishes to request a favor of my daughter,” Esmeralda stated in a clear and professional tone of voice, before she smiled at Alise. “I hope you don’t mind if I drag her away?”

“Wait! What if I don’t want to go!” I said even while standing up.

Both Alise and my mother turned to look at me, their eyes in turn explained why my personal opinion didn’t matter. Between the two of them they could probably destroy an entire army of regular soldiers in a matter of minutes. The intensity of those gazes was enough to make me step backward in fright, and remind me of a few times in my youth when I pissed my parents off.

“You can take her, but don’t you dare marry her off to someone,” Alise told my mother, before she refilled her cup of tea. “Have a nice trip Lily, bring back some souvenirs please.”

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The departure from the orphanage was one filled with a few upset children who had grown close to me over the past six months. Maria showed up and hugged me tightly, to which I could only respond with a hug back. She had managed to recover from losing her parents quite nicely, although she had gained a scar around her neck from the type of collar used by the slavers.

Taryn never showed up to say goodbye, although given how he had looked when I had last seen him it was probably due to embarrassment. It isn’t every day that someone gets knocked around by the mother of their…whatever I was to him. Skara patted me on the shoulder, then flashed his almost permanently existing grin at me.

Shorty was absent, he never appeared and it made me feel more than a little sad. The guy and I had barely known each other prior to the incident near Fisk and yet we’d grown closer than some families do. Yet there was the fact that eventually I would return to help remind me that sooner or later we’d meet again.

“I’ll be back before you guys know it!” I called out to everyone, before hopping into the carriage with my mother. Vargos stepped inside as well, then closed the door behind him. A few moments later the carriage started to move, and the long trip back to my home began.

It was a boring trip, one that made me want to smack my head against the inside of the carriage over and over again. Vargos quietly sat next to my mother and served her refreshments at regular intervals, while in turn my mother merely looked out the window of the carriage.

Normal families would probably talk about what had happened since they had last met. My mother had no interest, not because she hated me but simply due to the fact that it didn’t matter to her. She loved me, but in a way that defied normal conventions. If someone threatened to kill me she’d probably feed them their spine, but if I got in a fight which I started and died she would most likely shrug her shoulders and not care.

The carriage rolled south toward Shiadone, then it went west in the direction of the main highways of the empire. Arriving at a crossroad the carriage turned to the north, and began the long boring journey to Scintallia. To entertain myself along the way I began to form and reform the Shatterblade into different types of weapons, trying for greater flexibility in the structure.

Alise had told me that in the past my mother was able to create functioning crossbows and bows, which meant that all she needed was a quiver full of ammunition. The issue with doing that was in creating the threaded parts, metal didn’t exactly work well for that. My mother’s eyes wandered in my direction to look at the Shatterblade, a slight frown appeared but she remained quiet.

When night fell across the landscape normally people would stop their carriage and set up for the night, instead the carriage of the Rose family refused to cease moving. Onward it went for three days straight before we reached a small, finely furnished hotel in the middle of the town of Primvale.

The next day our journey began once more, silence enshrouded the carriage to the point of nearly driving me insane. The training with the Shatterblade continued, although it had barely shown any sort of progress due to the fact that I had no clue how to make metal string-like. The fact that my mother merely watched my actions without comment only added to the frustration.

The trip to Shiadone with Taryn had been boring, but this was by far the worse. At least when I had traveled with Taryn he showed interest in talking, plus Maria continually commented on things she’d never seen before. The trip with my mother on the hand could only be described as so boring I wanted to kill myself.

By the time we arrived at Scintallia I’m certain that part of my mind had started to snap from the boredom. I nearly leapt out of the carriage when it pulled up in front of my home, and cried for joy to the sky with hands uplifted. It was unladylike and yet I didn’t care, because at long last I was out of that accursed carriage!

Vargos stepped out of the carriage next and offered my mother his hand, which she graciously accepted before climbing down. Before she walked away from it she turned toward the carriage and looked up at the top of it. “If you’re done hiding, please escort my daughter,” she said to thin air, before turning back to the house and walking inside. Vargos followed her without hesitation, he never even glanced at the carriage.

“Scary as Alise ain’t she?” came a familiar voice from on top of the carriage, before a small figure jumped down.

“Shorty!” I cried out, though without running over and hugging him. When he had gotten on the carriage and how long he was on it was a mystery to me, although I could only assume it was from the start. “Why did you come?”

“Come on girl, like I was going to leave you to yourself,” Shorty said as he walked over to me. His height was so small, yet with him there it felt like everything would turn out well. “Now lead on, you know I’ve never been to your home before.”

“Ah, that’s right, come on!” I said with renewed energy. The presence of Shorty was what I had sorely needed in order to survive the trip home. Without any flair or theatrics I simply walked to the main door of the house.

Now to call it simply a house might prove how accustomed to it I was, but given that my father was Vandross Rose we were exceedingly well off. The house itself was really a mansion that was four floors in total height, with enough width to easily house a few hundred people if required. The exterior of it was kept clean and washed on a daily basis, while the interior was looked after by a small army of maids who were all slaves originally.

The massive doors had already been opened when my mother approached the front, twin butlers stood on each side in a bowed stance. They quietly waited for myself and Shorty to enter before they would straighten up and close the doors. As we passed by them I smiled, mostly since it was somewhat nice to see them again.

The foyer of the mansion was large enough to serve as a house all on it’s own. Two large curved staircases lead up from the first floor to the second, and then another mirrored set of staircases led up to the third floor from there. The fourth was a reserved area of the house entirely for my father and mother, and so the only access point to that was deeper inside.

The floor was made of a beautiful marble with carpets that cost significantly more than any of the slaves who worked here had. A chandelier rested high above crafted of crystal, diamonds and silver with the candles within left unlit. Along the walls were paintings that depicted various conflicts which my father had taken part in, including some which dealt with monsters rather than humans.

A beautiful looking maid stood near the left side staircase, her outfit matched the same as all the other maids who milled about cleaning the furniture and walls. However on her head was a slight tiara, as though to mark her as the princess of the maids. It was an idea that my mother had during a drinking game, or so I had heard from Vargos.

“Lady Liliana, welcome home,” the maid said as she curtsied toward me, her blue eyes sparkled mischievously. “Will you be in need of our services today?”

“Come on Diana, you know I hate it when you act like that,” I grumbled. I walked over to her and hugged her, no refusals allowed in that regard. “How have you been doing since I took off?”

“I’ve been fine, Vargos has watched over us to make sure Vandross didn’t do anything dumb,” Diana told me. She smiled while she hugged me back, almost giggling with happiness at my return.

A cough came from behind me, and with a start I turned and noticed Shorty standing there looking altogether confused. “Oh, sorry Shorty. Diana, this gentleman is Shorty, he’s helped me out a lot,” was the lame introduction I produced. If my mother had heard it she would’ve clicked her tongue and threatened to beat me.

Shorty nodded toward the maid, yet he seemed mostly uninterested in her. “Thank god we didn’t bring Skara with us,” he commented.

“Skara isn’t allowed anywhere near my house,” was my reply. Then we both started to laugh at the little inside joke, while Diana could only raise an eyebrow quizzically.

“Your mother left instructions for you, she said that you’ll meet with the High General later, so expect summons at any moment,” Diana told me. Then she bowed deeply, as is the duty of any proper servant, and motioned with one arm toward the direction of the first floor bedroom wing.

“Very well, thank you Diana,” I said, before walking toward the door that lead to the bedrooms. The door was opened by a butler who stood there, his entire duty was to stand guard on that doorway and make sure only the proper people were allowed through.

“Your family sure does have a lot of servants,” Shorty commented while we walked through the doorway. On the other side was another butler who had the same job as the first, though he worked the opposite side. Nearly every major doorway in the house had a pair of butlers who worked together on it, and every one was trained to fight to the death against intruders.

“My father doesn’t like to be bothered, so the small army he hired helps keep unwanted intruders out,” I said in response. We walked down a straight hallway that had a single door leading to the right every hundred yards or so. “Just to let you know almost everyone here is a slave, so don’t start any fusses over slaves please.”

Shorty stiffened a little at the mention of slaves, but nodded his head. “I understand, I’d rather not piss off your mother or father, given how easily she thrashed Taryn,” Shorty commented. Then he started to chuckle as he thought about how Taryn got knocked around.

When we reached the fourth door I paused, then turned and opened it up without concern about unlocking it. The door opened immediately, as I never bothered locking my own room since the servants knew better than to steal from me. Into the room we walked, before Shorty drew in a sharp breath at what he saw.

The inside of my room was at least two times the size of the cottage itself back at the orphanage. The bed was large enough that at least five people could lay on it with plenty of room to spare, while a reclining chair was nestled up against a bookcase. The bookcase held two hundred and thirty six books at last count, none of which were really all that interesting to read.

An ornate fireplace was settled up against the western wall, gold and silver trimmed with a hint of platinum. The fireplace was cleaned daily even if it was not used, and so it shone beautifully in the dim light of the candles. The candles in turn were placed strategically around the room in order to maintain a certain level of illumination. Every week they were replaced by the servants, who also cleaned up any wax that might have dripped away from the holder.

Along one wall was an array of different weapons ranging from primitive clubs to bows crafted of the finest wood. There were even some experimental weapons such as compound bows that used multiple pieces to create a whole, something that was still unused in the empire.

In the center of the room was a large table that could easily serve a dozen people, rectangular in shape and cleaned on a daily basis like everything else. The chairs near it were so well cushioned that merely sitting in one tended to make it hard to stand back up, as it was near intoxicating.

“Please, take a seat Shorty. I need to get changed, otherwise my mother will probably punish me,” I told him while walking toward a door that was set against the east side of the room. I opened it up and stepped inside, while Shorty could only watch me with a very confused look on his face.

Needless to say the room on the other side was designed for getting dressed, and contained all of my clothes. The amount was a staggering sum, most of which was purchased by the maids who wanted to see me wear a variety of different dresses and outfits. Still given that we expected company it would be best to wear a formal outfit, and so that left a greatly decreased selection of only a hundred to choose from.

The problem was that putting on the dress would require some form of help, which Shorty most definitely was not going to be allowed to give. With a sigh I could only turn to the door, and walk back into my room. Shorty looked at me with a question in his eyes, but I merely waved him off and told him to stay.

A short while later I was back in the dressing room with two maids, neither of whom I knew very well. One was Felicia and the other was named Ophelia, and both were recent hires. Diana promised me that they were more than capable of helping to dress me, though, and so began the torture of putting on a proper attire for the evening.

When I stepped out of the dressing room my body was garbed in an evening gown that went all the way down to my ankles. It was a one-shoulder design that was tight enough in some spots to leave little to the imagination of how my body probably looked, yet loose enough in the important spots that nothing showed. The dress itself was the color of a dark red rose, while an embroidered flower rested near where the one-shoulder strap met the rest of the dress.

My black hair had been pulled up into a bun, then a beautiful crystal hairpin had been placed into it. The pin itself had a carved jewel that resembled a blooming rose on it. The maids had been kind enough to do my makeup for me as well, and so my facial features looked almost entirely different to Shorty.

My feet had a pair of dark red heels on them, they were not very comfortable and made walking much more difficult to pull off. The overall color scheme was designed to match up together along with the ruby lipstick that the maids had applied.

“Really good thing we didn’t let Skara come,” Shorty commented again, while he looked at me with a bit of awe in his eyes.

 

Chapter 3 :: The Rock In The Rose Garden

There’s nothing quite like going home and then having dinner with your family, who in turn also decided to invite in some guests. I was seated in a very fine chair within the main dining hall of the second floor, still wearing my evening dress as that was the entire point to putting it on. To my left sat Shorty, who had been forced into a tuxedo that managed to fit him thanks to the skills of Diana.

We were seated at the end of the table in regard to where my father sat, who sat by himself on the short-side of the rectangle that the table created. My mother was to my right, while directly across from her were the guests. One was a general who worked for the Legion while another was the singular High General, the leader of the entire armed forces of the Empire.

Vandross Rose was a man that time had started to claim, his hair grown white while wrinkles had started to appear on his handsome face. Much like myself my father was garbed in formal attire, a dinner suit which had been carefully tailored to accentuate the muscles of his arms and chest.

Esmeralda Rose in turn wore an evening gown that was similar to my own, although she had opted for a shorter length. It went down to right above her knees and offered a nice glimpse of legs, if one was interested in those types of things. Her color was a dark blue, and she wore a necklace which had a sapphire crystal embedded on it. Somehow she was all smiles, even though my father hadn’t spoken a single word since dinner started.

The general that was directly across from myself was apparently General Rudicus, a newly appointed one who was barely older than twenty-four. He had dirty-blonde hair, green eyes and an overall impressive look to his body. The outfit he had opted to wear was strangely enough his armor suit, thankfully not heavy platemail but instead a chainmail vest along with leg metal armguards and leggings. The gauntlets had been removed and placed on the table across from Shorty, along with the unbelted scabbard for his sword.

The High General was Sciroco, otherwise known as Rock or The Rock, or even Rocky if you wanted to get punched by him. He sat in his chair as impassive as always, a stern look on his face while he talked gently with my mother about the state of affairs. Given that I had little interest in how the northern expanses of the empire were faring economically my mind had wandered a bit. Unlike Rudicus he wore a regular dinner suit, black and white colors that matched the same type of outfit Shorty wore.

We had been served goose, which wasn’t my favorite but most definitely was my fathers. A glass of wine had been granted to each, although Shorty had asked for a full glass rather than the usual half-filled glass most people take. He had no issue with acting as common as possible, as he ate the goose without using fork or knife and noisily slurped the wine down.

It was a refreshing thing to have him by my side, at the moment he served as an escort and bodyguard. The normal dinner in my house was all of us seated there, eating quietly while nobody talked. Sometimes my mother would say something to me, and then my father would merely grumble about how I wasn’t a boy and how much of a failure I was.

To be fair it wasn’t that my father hated me, if anything he hated how I was not a boy. All his life he had grown up expecting to bear some great heir to the God of War, and in turn he ended up with a daughter who to him was weak. If I was hurt he would care, but also blame it on myself and expect me to deal with my own problems.

When I took off from the house it seemed unlikely he had even noticed or cared, I was my own responsibility in his eyes. My mother was somewhat like that, though at the same time she cared enough about me to worry while I was gone. Bothering to ask the legionnaire to find and return me had probably cost her a bit of pride, which in turn made me feel guilty.

“So, Flower,” Sciroco suddenly said as he looked toward me. The usage of his old nickname for me from our days of training made my eyes widen. “I’ve heard you were off training on your own, and trying to improve yourself?”

“I felt that it was better to get some fresh air and a fresh perspective,” I responded with, while nibbling at a piece of goose.

“It’s a pity too, while you were gone I brought Rudicus here so he could test himself against you, but then you weren’t here at all,” Sciroco said with that permanent straight face. His emotions never showed, he never flinched nor seemed to feel. He was the Rock and it was for a reason.

Shorty snorted at that comment, though he didn’t expand on his response with words. “I highly doubt I could match up to one of the Legion’s generals,” was my own comment. In truth I had no clue how strong Rudicus was in regard to people like Skara, so I felt it was best to err on the side of caution.

“Ah, well…maybe you could try later anyways,” Sciroco said, while he lifted up his glass of wine and looked at it. “My men told me you used my name to get out of some trouble in Vicna, six months ago.”

My father’s fork set down with a loud clink against his plate, and he looked toward me with curious eyes. In all my life he had very rarely ever shown interest in me, so it was an unnerving feeling to have his full attention directed at me. “I was merely passing through, I managed to get out before the Plague showed up.”

“Lucky given how many there were,” my father commented, before he almost disappointedly picked up his fork and started to eat again.

Shorty went to make a comment, to which I responded by elbowing him in the side before he could say a word. I had no interest in bragging about my current capabilities, nor talking about Taryn and our fight against Nixi. Rudicus was the only one who seemed to take note of that, though I knew better than to underestimate the gathered warriors present. Alise was at a level higher than my mother, who was in turn equal to Sciroco. My father was technically an unknown, though I could expect he was at least an equal for Alise given they both worked for Mathias.

An hour later the dinner was done, we had barely talked and Shorty had begun to understand my trepidation at returning home. It was not a fun place to be, if anything it was like a prison from which I had never been allowed to properly leave. While I loved my family at times I simply wanted to run far far away and never look back.

The first to leave the table was my father, he never bothered to look in my direction nor talk to me. Instead he calmly said his goodbyes to Sciroco before walking out of the room. My mother, as always, apologized for how untalkative my father had been before also walking out after him. She spent most of her free time trying to make up for his social inadequacies, something that made me wonder why she even bothered.

“I see your father is still the same,” Sciroco commented to me while standing up. The maids had moved in to clear the table of all utensils and dirty plates, while the butlers stood behind each of us at the ready in case we needed anything.

“He’s incapable of changing, he’s too old,” I told Sciroco, while also standing up. Shorty to my side joined me, though Rudicus remained seated while he watched all of us quietly. During the entire dinner he had barely spoken any words, and seemed more interested in absorbing information.

Sciroco stepped around the table and hugged me tightly, while he laughed. Rudicus could only stare in wonder at that, as the unmoving silence of the Rock had shattered in front of his eyes. “Flower, how you doing you little brat!” he yelled out while hugging me even tighter.

So tightly I had to protest it a bit. “Rocky, can’t breath, let me go!” I told him while flailing a little at him with my hands. Obviously there was no real strength behind the hits, it would be bad for the house if that happened.

Carefully he put me back down, and then stepped back and looked at me from top to bottom. He grinned, then slowly let all of those emotions slip away from his face. A few moments later he was that same unfeeling boulder as always. “Seriously though, you seem to have turned out well. Guess all those years lightly training you wasn’t for naught.”

“Your training was more like hell,” I reminded Sciroco, while making certain my dress wasn’t too badly mussed by his hug. With one hand I motioned toward Shorty who was next to me. “This is Shorty, he’s a good friend I picked up in the last year.”

Sciroco’s eyes turned to look at the small man, a flicker of recognition and then nothing more. “High General Sciroco at your service,” he told Shorty while offering his hand to the midget.

Shorty shook his hand in response, though he remained quiet. If anything he seemed too quiet, as though there had been some sort of communication that went between them in that moment. The sound of a chair moving caused all of us to look toward Rudicus as he stood up, belting his sword back to his waist.

“High General, perhaps we should get to our reason for being here?” Rudicus reminded his superior officer as he walked over to join us.

“Ah yes, well it’s simple enough,” Sciroco started before pausing. He looked at me once more, and then glanced at Rudicus. “General Rudicus is being dispatched to investigate some odd happenings in the empire. He’s taking a small group of legionnaires with him, but he feels they aren’t enough.”

It was easy to see where this was going, I even sighed. “So that’s what mother meant about paying back the debt. You’re dragging me along too aren’t you?”

“Indeed, although I’m going to have to request that your friend does not participate in this,” Sciroco commented. He looked at Shorty and nodded his head. “I’m sure you’ll understand. This is Legion business.”

Shorty looked like he was about to protest, so I headed it off. “It’s okay Shorty. The Legion are like a second family to me, plus I’m certain the legionnaires know what’ll happen if they try to do anything to me.”

Rudicus adjusted himself a little at that, while he cleared his throat. “We know about how protective the High General is of you, so yes you’ll definitely be in good hands.”

“When do you plan to head out?” was the only question I could think of.

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll meet up in the plaza of Scintallia and then head west, before swinging south-west. After a short bit we’ll reach the other five. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to head to the guest room and start resting,” Rudicus stated. Without waiting for any response he turned and walked from the room, his walk a rigid style that made him look almost too serious.

“He’s trying to be like you isn’t he?” I asked of Sciroco, before laughing at the thought of two of him.

“Probably. A lot of the younger kids try to emulate me,” Sciroco admitted, before he slowly walked toward the door. “How about we settle down somewhere and have a talk about how you’ve been doing?”

With that Sciroco, Shorty and myself left the dining hall and went to a study on the first floor. While the maids and butlers continued their daily activities, and as the sun began to set on the horizon I told one of my oldest and closest friends what I had been up to since our last meeting. I even talked to him about how I had taken part in the Plague fight, though I didn’t tell him about Taryn’s lineage nor the soul infection he had done on me.

It was a nice night filled with laughter, happiness and good feelings. It was one of the few nights I had spent in my home where I didn’t go to bed depressed, and it reminded me all over again why I found Sciroco to be such a wonderful person. Like a close uncle that you long to see since he always makes you smile, I hoped to talk with him again sometime soon.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The next morning I left the mansion with a happy look on my face, given that I was walking away once more from the home that tended to not feel like one. Shorty walked with me half the way to the plaza before he peeled off, though I gave him a light hug before he left. I would miss that short little man during whatever idiocy the Legion was yanking me into.

My clothes had shifted from the formal dress back to baggy attire. Pants that were far too billowy and a shirt that revealed nothing made a mockery of any attempt to deduce how slim my body might be, or how endowed my chest might have become. My ponytail was once more wrapped around my neck like an unusual necklace, and the two metal rings that represented the Shatterblade clicked almost musically on my left wrist.

The only oddity amongst it all was perhaps the large white hat I wore on my head, it was a gift that Maria had made quite some time ago and that I found pleasant to wear. It kept the sun out of my eyes quite nicely, and only required me to hold onto the brim when the wind gusted a bit too hard.

Rudicus still wore his ridiculous armor, when I walked up to him at the plaza he was the only person wearing a breastplate so it was easy to find him. He in turn looked at me with eyes of shock, he had expected me to look probably a lot more womanly and not so bland. Sciroco was nowhere in sight, he had explained during our conversations last night that he had business to attend to in town.

“You ready?” I asked of Rudicus while he stood there with that confused look on his face. He was a long ways off from being the unemotional rock that was Sciroco. “Or are you going to stare at me all day?”

The general snapped out of his daze and turned away from me, though he still seemed a bit shaken with how different I looked. To be fair it kind of was like seeing a majestic eagle turn into a run-down horse, so his confusion was warranted. “Alright, lets go. I have some horses held for us outside of the city. We should make good time with them.”

 

Chapter 4 :: The Oak That Fell Silent

The horses that Rudicus acquired for us were of a good stock, all in all they were well trained and proved in no way a problem. While we rode away from the city of Scintallia neither Rudicus nor I exchanged words, he would obviously tell me information when he felt it was needed. Personally I had no interest in talking to him at all, if he was worth respecting I’d learn that soon enough during the course of our mission.

Mission. The thought of having to do something like that aggravated me, I hoped that it wasn’t going to be some years long horrid affair that left me wandering from city to city punching the helpless. The Legion normally don’t do such horrid tactics, but given that the legionnaires defended cities like Vicna my opinion in them had waned a little.

Not that I was about to go back and tell Sciroco no, the man had trained me most of my youth and was the main culprit for my combat proficiency. While my father found me to be a horrid waste of space it was Sciroco who thought I had great potential, and often commented that I would one day be the equal of my mother.

The advantage to riding horses over using a carriage should be obvious to anyone who understands the basics of both, the horses move fast while the carriage is slow. Given that the driver also took his time so as not to disturb my mother the overall trip to our home was far larger than what the return would be.

Sadly we were not destined to head back to the orphanage, I had already grown to miss the constant sound of children playing and Skara’s crazed laughter. Even the oft distant presence of Taryn was something that left a slight ache, although thankfully I was free from Alise and her wretched smacking of my head.

In comparison it was like the blink of an eye when we arrived at the camp which Rudicus had left his men at, a small little encampment that consisted of rudimentary tenting materials and a cheap looking campfire. The campfire had a few sticks near it, plus one that went over the fire and what was possibly the poorest looking metal tin hanging from it. It was standard legionnaire equipment, and it made me smile a little in remembrance of the harsh training.

When our horses loudly clopped up to the camp two of the soldiers present had already pulled out bows and notched arrows against their bowstrings. Rudicus lifted up one arm, open palm facing toward the soldiers in a sign that he meant no harm. A call came from the group, and then the five soldiers all fell into place while Rudicus and I finished closing the gap and dismounted.

“Jesson, take the horses and water them,” Rudicus demanded of one of the soldiers while he stepped over to investigate the other four. I followed him, not exactly sure what I should be doing.

Jesson was a young looking man with black hair, blue eyes. His overall body was average, he wore the regular legionnaire armor and had a single sword belted to his waist. He had been one of the archers who had pointed their arrows at us, and looked a bit ashamed when he discarded his bow and arrow to follow through with Rudicus’ command.

While he walked by I held onto the white sunhat on my head, while smiling pleasantly toward the soldiers gathered. Rudicus had no need for a smile as he stepped up and cleared his throat, which made every single soldier snap to and salute him. At a glance every single one of them looked to be a positive representation of the Legion, and I nodded my head absently at how this might turn out to be a fine venture.

Rudicus began to introduce each of them, with simply a name and an overall job referred to each. The cook and medic was an old looking man who was a bit more portly than one might anticipate from a military force. Alex had a large axe strapped at his waist instead of a sword, while he scowled at me as though unhappy with my presence.

The scout of our party was a thin young woman who was probably close to my age, she had short cut brown hair along with hazel eyes. Nala, as she was called, had been the other archer who had pointed their weapon in our direction, though she didn’t seem disturbed in the slightest at whom she had aimed. Aside from the bow she had a long dagger strapped onto her waist, it seemed she was one who focused primarily on ranged combat.

One of the core warriors who served as vanguard in combat was a tough looking man named Braddicus, a short cut beard grown away from his face. He had a few scars on his face, along with an eye which had a white iris. Out of everyone he was the only armed with a tower shield, along with a long-handled mace which seemed quite capable of braining any ordinary opponent readily.

The fellow vanguard position was left to the tallest woman I had ever had the distinct pleasure of meeting. Her long red hair flowed down almost to her ankles, and she smiled quite often even though there seemed to be no reason for it. On her hands were spiked knuckles rather than regular gauntlets, and she had no weapons belted to her. Her name was Bell, and I doubted she was musically inclined.

Apparently the rearguard was left to Jesson, while Rudicus and I would supply support wherever we felt the need was greatest. “So you only use your fists to fight?” I asked of Bell.

The response from her was to smash her two fists together loudly, before grinning at me. The flash of teeth and the height made me feel a bit afraid of her, though until we had a proper fight I was uncertain of her capability in regard to my own. “Nothing more fun than smashing someones face in with your own fists,” Bell told me. Dear god she was the female version of Skara.

“Alright, we’ll clean up the camp and start moving out once the horses have enough time to rest, any questions?” Rudicus asked of his soldiers. Jesson had walked back over to join us, picking up his fallen bow and arrow from before.

“So we’re taking the princess of the Legion along with us?” Alex growled out, he shifted a bit and glared in my direction as though I had spit on his face or something.

“We are indeed, do you have a problem with that?” Rudicus said as he glared at Alex.

Alex turned his gaze away, though he grumbled a few choice words which may or may not have included comments about my sexual proclivity. The way that Nala stiffened up made me all the more curious about what he had said, and by curious I meant interested in punching him in the face.

The last time I got to punch someone was when I fought with Skara, so it might have clouded my judgement with what I did next. Without waiting for Rudicus to reprimand his soldier I stepped forward and poked a finger at Alex and his distended belly. “If you have a problem maybe you should approach me about it?” I inquired sweetly, although my eyes held nothing but cold steel.

The other legionnaires backed away immediately, while Alex could only splutter out a few words from his pig-like mouth. Rudicus loudly cleared his throat, and then calmly stepped back two big steps from us both. “Don’t break anything,” he requested of the both of us.

Alex could only chortle at that, while he unslung his axe and gripped it tightly in one hand. He stood there, holding it and watching me for a few moments. “Aren’t you going to get a weapon?” he asked, while he looked over my body. There were no visible weapons to be seen, and he was all too assured that I was subsequently unarmed.

My only response to that was to scoff and then lift up a middle finger. Alex did not take that too well, he squealed almost like a pig as he charged toward me with his axe swinging for my head. All the soldiers took a half-step forward while crying out, it was a lethal move and one that was not supposed to be used in personal duels. If anything he should’ve struck with the blunt side of the axe, rather than the sharpened edge.

While I was not on par with people like Alise, the attack from Alex was almost a laughable assault in regard to my favorite sparring partner Skara. The swing was slow enough that even without unloading all of my power I could still easily duck under the assault, before pushing forward and ramming a fist hard into the massive stomach of Alex.

He coughed out loudly, a bit of moisture fell on me from above, and I winced at the thought I might’ve broken one of his ribs or burst an internal organ. The legionnaires are a tough sort of folk, especially with the enhanced armor they wear, but a piece of trash is a piece of trash no matter how pretty it looks.

Alex growled though and it relieved me, even as he attempted to drop the handle his axe on my head. My response was to catch the oncoming axe handle, grip it tightly and rip it from his hand. While he could only stare in confusion at how easily I had overpowered him I brought an elbow up at his jaw and sent him reeling backward.

“That’s enough!” Rudicus barked out, most likely due to the fact that Alex’s lip had busted open and he probably had a bruised jaw. The fat soldier lightly snarled as he looked at me, but he for the most part demonstrated a certain degree of self-control. With a slow salute he stepped forward and offered one hand toward me, as though expecting the axe to be given back.

If I had been in a worse mood I would’ve broken the axe, but given that we might need him as a meat shield in the near future I chose to toss the axe gently up in the air. He shouted a few swear words of surprise, and then tried to catch his weapon without grabbing the bladed end. While he played his juggling act I had already turned away and started to walk toward the horse Rudicus had acquired for me.

“As I said, we’ll take a short rest to let our horses recuperate, and then we’ll head out for our target,” Rudicus said in a calm voice. He placed one hand on the handle of his sword while he stared at his soldiers. “If anyone has any more issues with the presence of Liliana I am always willing to listen.”

The five soldiers for the most part understood, though it seemed that out of them all only Alex had any visible distaste for me. As to why I couldn’t quite understand, perhaps he had been one of the many legionnaires I had trained with as a youth and summarily stomped into the ground?

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

After my little scuffle with Alex the other four soldiers welcomed me quite nicely, though I spent most of my time talking with Braddicus. He interested me in that he used a tower shield, it was a rarely seen tool amongst the legionnaires.

“Well I was out on patrol with some friends and I noticed during our fights with some bandits that they tended to nick us in our legs and arms a lot,” Braddicus told me while we rode next to each other. “After I picked up my fifth scar on my legs I decided I was tired of leaving most of my body unprotected, so I asked the Legion blacksmiths for a larger shield.”

“Ohh, they don’t like that,” I murmured.

“No they don’t, god forbid their flawlessly designed equipment not be up to my standards, I thought for a moment they were going to kill me,” Braddicus admitted. He chuckled a little, “I managed to get them to take it as a challenge, so they designed the tower shield for me. Since then I’ve noticed a few more have popped up but mostly only the crazy vanguards tend to utilize them.”

“I’ve tried it out before, a bit too bulky for my build,” I told him. “Though a nice thing to hide behind in a pinch.”

“That it is, that’s why I’ve pushed for more people to use them but…well, people are stuck in their ways I suppose.”

It was the small conversations that made up the nearly three week long trip to our intended area, far to the south-west on the edge of the Empire. During the conversations I learned a few facts about each of the people who I was to work with, save for Alex who still insisted on avoiding me.

However to call any of the information useful would be a far cry from the truth. It showed aspects of their personalities, but that wasn’t going to help us when we got attacked by someone. It was unlikely that Nala would encounter any type of mice in the middle of a pitched battle, for instance, and so the conversations only helped to stave off the boredom.

So rather than droning on about what you honestly don’t need to know about, since I highly doubt you’d care to know every little detail of the trip, instead I’ll focus on our arrival at Oakvale. The forest that surrounded the small little farm village was predominately oak, which wasn’t all too shocking given the town name.

The oak trees in turn had been used for most of the lumber for the town, multiple squat little houses that were barely better than the ones I had seen at Fisk were clumped together. An actual wall, that was ten feet tall and three feet thick ran along the perimeter of the town. Nearby the northern gate that lead into Oakvale a lantern hung from a brass hook off of the wooden frame of the gateway, the light still flickered although it looked about ready to go out.

Our entry into the town was without any fanfare, there were no calls of alarm nor even noises that would mean people had locked and boarded up their homes. Instead it was as though nothing existed in Oakvale, it was the quietest place I had seen in a while and made a tingle run down my spine.

“Not exactly a wonderful place, is it?” Braddicus commented from my side. I smiled at him, but refrained from responding since it was obvious.

“Alright!” Rudicus yelled out, perhaps a bit too loud as the birds which had roosted on top of the houses took to the air in shock. “Alex start setting up a camp site, I want it out in the open away from those buildings. Braddicus go door to door, if nobody responds knock the door down. Bell you’re with him, make sure nothing happens to him.”

Rudicus dismounted from his horse and handed the reins over to an already dismounted Jesson. He lifted up one hand and pointed at me, then pointed at the largest building in the middle of the town. “Liliana and I will help scout the town, we’ll take the mayors house first. Nala I want you on guard, Jesson set up the horses somewhere and make sure they’re fed. Nobody goes out of line of sight of one another!”

With that everyone started to do their assigned task, Nala hovered inbetween Alex and Jesson while they both went about their duties. The near giant Bell, with a loud laugh, walked alongside the shorter Braddicus and started to talk to him about anything and everything. Rudicus looked to me, then nodded his head toward the large building once more.

We approached it slowly, the exterior of the building looked to be in flawless condition. When we reached the door Rudicus knocked loudly and yelled in greeting, then when nobody responded he shouldered the door open with enough force to knock the door off of the hinges.

He grimaced at that, probably since he hadn’t intended to use that much force, and then stepped inside. “Liliana,” he called out to me, and I stepped inside after him. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Probably,” I responded, and shivered in fright.

We went around the town and continued to check each building, and yet in each building we kept finding the same conditions. There were no cries for help nor screams of horror from the other members of our group, and so after a short while of searching we reconvened over near the gates, outside of the circle of wooden buildings.

“It’s creepy as hell,” Braddicus complained as he slumped down onto the ground. Alex had already started to serve out some stew for all of us in wooden bowls, and Braddicus had been the first to acquire his bowl. “Never seen anything like it before.”

“None of us have,” Rudicus told him. Then he sighed and looked up at the sky, at the clouds overhead and the hastily descending sun. “The Legion knew something was weird when three towns went quiet but…”

We could only sit there and eat our stew, as we thought on our discovery. Every single house, every single part of the town all said the same thing. Nothing had gone wrong, everyone had been fine and everything had progressed along at a good pace. There were no signs of conflict, no signs of death, nothing at all to mark a problem.

The half-eaten meals, the books left opened on tables, no weapons in any of the homes had been picked up and moved. We had found no signs of blood, nothing at all to help figure out what had happened.

“A ghost town,” Nala murmured, as she stared at the wooden structures with fear. Fear of the unknown, something that could at any point take us all.

While we finished our stew a potential clue came upon us, though without any of us wanting it to happen. A loud scream from the forest nearby, almost a roaring noise that caused all of us to jump. Our hands all started to move toward our weapons, while we stood up and cast looks in the direction the noise had come from.

“What the hell,” was all Braddicus managed to say before a dark shadow nearly the size of a house fell on him.

 

Chapter 5 :: A Nice Dream

For that split moment there was a breakout of chaos amongst the legionnaires. Braddicus was beneath a dark form that made a mockery of anything I had ever seen before in my life, the other four could only scream in terror while Rudicus paled viisibly. Everybody scrambled away, it was all about keeping yourself alive and hang the others mentality.

The creature that had the armored Braddicus beneath one foot turned slowly to look at us as we moved, it had landed with a hind leg on the soldier as though it was unintended. The height was easily over twenty feet while the length was a long forty feet, discounting the serpentine tail that swung out from behind that added on another ten feet at least.

The body had scales which were a dark coloring, one that almost shimmered and changed while I watched it move. The muscles were obvious, it was a thick and powerful creature that with a single look from one reptilian eye sent a cold chill through my body. The neck of the monster was not altogether long, while the head had ear and nose holes along with a large gaping mouth lined with fangs the size of broadswords.

“Sundrake!” Rudicus bellowed out, while he loudly clanged one gauntlet against his chest armor. The soldiers nearby responded as though this was all they needed to recuperate, the thin and light looking Nala darted furthest away from the sundrake.

A hand touched my shoulder, I had fallen to the ground in my haste to escape without even realizing it. Jesson offered me a hand while in his other he gripped his sword, though his eyes never left the sundrake. To my left and a fair bit off Alex had already brandished his axe, though he looked with obvious fear at the gargantuan opponent.

“You know the drill, get to work!” Rudicus barked at the soldiers, while I was in the midst of standing up.

The Legion was not known for being impressive for no reason, the soldiers quickly fell into their normally handled tasks with Bell stepping up closest to the sundrake. The beast turned, the audible crack of metal breaking beneath the hind leg never even phased it. Instead it started forward at a slow pace, it had all the time in the world to devour us.

Two arrows hit it in the middle of the head, the gap between their striking so close it seemed impossible to have been fired by a single person. While the sundrake flinched from the minor tickle the crazed Bell leapt forward with a loud laugh, then started to punch at the right foreleg of the beast. A few moments later Alex shocked me by moving in after her, swinging his axe at the left foreleg with full intention to cleave all the way through it.

The axe was not strong enough to do such a feat, nor was the user capable enough for him to even entertain the thought. Still the blade dug in far, blood gushed from the new wound and the sundrake stepped back quickly from the pain that shot through the legs. While it recoiled Jesson sheathed his sword and pulled out his bow, then joined Nala in firing arrows at the head.

There was a reason they did not shoot for the eyes of the sundrake, and that was made obvious when one arrow struck into it and bounced clear off. The sundrake’s eyes were covered with a protective layer, given that it would have gone blind in the desert it originated from otherwise. Rudicus stepped forward, sword in one hand and a small shield strapped to his left forearm, though he made no move to join the fray yet.

Beneath the dark figure of the lizard a figure could be seen as it rolled away. The armor that adorned the person had fallen away in chunks, and one of the arms flopped about in a way that screamed out it was obviously broken. However Braddicus had no care about that, being stepped on again by the sundrake most likely would’ve killed him.

While the others worked away at hurting the monster, I darted forward in the direction of our injured companion. Rudicus made no move to stop nor join me, so I felt there would be no problems with my chosen task. When I reached Braddicus who had managed to roll perhaps twelve feet from his starting point it was impossible not to gasp, his arm was clearly broken and the rest of his body was cut from chunks of metal which had gouged into him.

“Don’t move!” I told him while I reached down and picked him up, an act that caused him to widen his eyes in shock.

“Liliana!” Rudicus yelled out in warning, though it was a tad too late.

The giant tail of the beast twirled and smashed down onto me from above, the injured body in my arms flew away accidentally. The other legionnaires could only grimace, Nala in the back even looked as white as a sheet. The powerful blow that had crushed down onto me left a visible dent in the ground, while I had been smashed into a laying position.

While the attack against me distracted the legionnaires the sundrake roared and leapt forward, it had dealt with the annoyance to the side and now wanted to feast. With a wide open mouth it lunged onto Bell and bit into her, lifting her up in the giant jaw while she screamed out in surprise. Alex backed away as that happened, and then threw his axe up at the head in hopes of doing something.

It was a futile gesture as the axe buried into the side of the sundrake’s jaw, and promptly drew only a small amount of blood. More arrows rained down on the drake but it was impossible to hit it anywhere close to the mouth, neither Nala nor Jesson wished to harm the still living Bell. The creature started to shake it’s head, as though to try and quiet Bell by breaking her body like a crocodile.

Rudicus stepped in then, or rather he charged in at a speed that was quite impressive. His blade was short and yet he still managed to nearly chop off the bruised right foreleg which Bell had tenderized. The weapon bit in deep, then ripped out and he chopped again with both hands around the handle of his sword. The shield he had worn before was left to the wayside, ignored as it would prove useless against this foe.

The sundrake bellowed in pain and threw Bell, her tall body flew in an arc which dropped her into the roof of one of the houses. The force of her landing was enough that she punctured straight through the wood, and disappeared into the darkened interior. The drake lifted up the left foreleg and swung a paw at Rudicus who could only pause in his hacking to try and ward off the attack.

He was sent sprawling onto the ground, and Jesson started to walk forward while he redrew his sword. “Don’t!” Rudicus yelled at him, one hand lifted up to try and stop the soldier from approaching closer. He knew the score, the sundrake was a monster normally fought with a dozen or more soldiers. “Take Nala and withdraw to the nearest town!”

Jesson was about to do that when he paused, his eyes tracked upward to the sky and looked at the descending figure above the sundrake. It’s hard to not fault him for looking so shocked while I hurtled down from above, the last they knew of I had been smashed into the ground while wearing no armor. None had noticed me stand up, none had seen the red glint in my eye as I catapulted myself up into the air.

The two rings on my wrist clinked loudly while the wind tore past my face, I grinned as I descended at the sundrake. The right hand lifted up and the fingers spread, then a snap came. A second later there was a massive broadsword in my right hand, one that I gripped with my left even as the blood in my body pumped like mad.

The world about me slowed down to a crawl, the shocked look on Jesson’s face as he stared up at me was all too easy to see. The injured Rudicus as he struggled valiantly back up to his feet, he had yet to notice my presence. Nala who still fired arrows into the behemoth even though it was like spitting on him. Braddicus as he tried hard to get back up, but couldn’t due to the injuries he had sustained.

Then the world clicked back to normal, my blade crashed into the head of the sundrake and sheared off a large chunk of the left side. The monster recoiled instantly from the pain, confusion driving it to scream out in horror. When my feet touched the earth there was only the slightest of pauses, then my muscles bunched and I burst toward the nearby foreleg.

The broadsword swung out and cut through it with such ease it was almost scary, the creature fell down as it lost the support of the leg. The other legionnaires could only gape while I leapt straight at the exposed eye of the sundrake and drove the massive sword home. Blood erupted everywhere while my body turned as crimson as my eye, and a moment later I ripped free with a backward leap off of the heavily injured face of the drake.

By the time I landed the monster had already died, the loud groan it made while the life escaped from it almost sad to hear. The once fresh and happy looking grass within Oakvale had forever been stained by a red blemish which continued to worsen by the second. While my back straightened and I began to study the legionnaires, the feel of wet blood as it slid down my body made me feel disgusted.

Rudicus snapped the awed legionnaires back to normal, he stomped over toward me with the left arm held by his right. He was obviously injured, a bit of blood trickled from a gash on his forehead, but he managed to look calm. He may not have been Sciroco but he had made strong strides in gaining that impassiveness which had earned the high general his nickname. “Nala!” Rudicus barked out at her, before he pointed at the house Bell fell into. “Check on her status immediately!”

“Alex, take that monster and drag it out of here. If you need to cut down the gateway to do so I don’t care, use the horses to pull it,” Rudicus told our chef. His gaze turned toward Braddicus, before he sighed. “Jesson check on Brad, keep him stable until Nala can check on him.”

With a snap of a finger I sent the Shatterblade back into the dormant mode, two metal rings on my wrist. One was a pure silver whilst the other was a crimson equal to the sliver of red in my left eye. “What do you need me to do?” I asked, while I saluted toward him.

“There are some water barrels in town, get one and wash yourself off. We don’t need you stinking like guts and blood,” Rudicus told me, then he started to walk toward the largest house in town. “We aren’t camping outside tonight, we’re going indoors and taking our chances.”

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

A few hours later we had gathered in the mayors house, and it was at that point I took stock of what our greatest loss was. It was a large one, in truth I wanted to go out and kill another sundrake simply due to the fact that it had happened in the first place. The hat Maria had made for me was gone, lost in the midst of the fighting.

Braddicus had laughed hard, then groaned in pain, when he heard of the loss of the hat. “Better the hat than your limbs!” he had told me, though his own arm looked so bad it might be in danger of being lost.

Bell had for the most part avoided death by sheer luck, the teeth that had gripped her ended up with a gap between them large enough to merely wedge her in place. While she had cuts along the sides of her bodies, and her armor was a bit tangled and damaged, she was for the most part okay. The concussion was the greatest danger she faced, though Nala felt given a few days and Bell would be back to normal.

Alex had barely taken any injury during the whole incident, though he had taken back his axe. The act of dragging the sundrake out of town required him to damage the main gate a little, then he tired the horses out in order to take the carcass far enough from town to not be afraid of burning it. At the moment he was in the midst of creating an easy soup to eat, one that even Braddicus could enjoy given his injuries.

Braddicus was the most worrying one out of all of us, he had a clearly broken arm along with the complete loss of his legionnaire armor. For the Legion losing that armor was like being crippled, and to be crippled on top of that would have a strong psychological impact. The injuries to the rest of his body were mostly caused by the armor shattering apart and cutting him, though it seemed likely he had a few bruised if not broken ribs.

Rudicus and Jesson were in the midst of a discussion with Nala, all three of them had managed to avoid major injuries. Rudicus was the worst out of them all though his arm had not been broken. While they talked I in turn looked in the mirror within the dining area of the mayors house.

The clothes I now wore were borrowed from Nala, and she favored tighter clothes than I. Thankfully it didn’t make anything revealing, but it meant that if I wanted my full range of motions the inevitable ripping of the cloth would happen. My hair was no longer in a ponytail but loose against my back, still wet from the thorough rinsing I had undergone.

In regard to being struck by the tail it had barely hurt me, a side effect thanks to Taryn and his soul integrating with mine. My body was far more durable than the ordinary person, and even though I had developed a gash on my head plus a few bruised bones they were almost all healed. It made me wonder what would happen if someone cut off Taryn’s arm or leg, would he regrow it or even be able to simply reattach it?

Rudicus walked over to me, he was in the middle of flexing his injured arm as though to be sure it could still function. “I can see why Sciroco offered to have you come along, I didn’t think you could do that,” Rudicus commented toward me.

“Most people don’t,” I told him, while calmly sipping from the bowl that Alex had given to me. The soup was warm and well flavored, from what I could tell it was chicken. “What are we going to do now?”

“What do you mean, we’re going home aren’t we?” Nala asked from across the room, she looked up from reapplying bandages to Braddicus with a quizzical look.

“No, we still haven’t solved the mystery yet,” Rudicus told her. “There’s no way a sundrake could take all these people so easily, so quietly. It would’ve torn through walls and murdered people, making a mess everywhere.”

The legionnaires had for a moment looked happy, they heard the words from Nala and all thought the same way. Then along came the bad news and every single one of them almost collapsed emotionally, though none would admit it. “Might want to send for some reinforcements,” I commented to Rudicus.

“In the morning I’ll write up something,” Rudicus told us before he sighed. “Speaking of which, all of you need to get some sleep. Nala, Jesson and I will rotate for night watch. Nobody goes outside, nobody opens the door! If anyone tries, stop them by any means.”

The soup was finished off in short order, then I placed the bowl down gently. “Thanks for the meal,” I said to Alex, who could only look at me with an unhappy face. He had grown even more disgruntled toward me after the sundrake fight.

“I’ll leave the door unlocked for you Nala, though if anyone else comes in I’ll chop their head off,” I stated in an even tone of voice. Without looking back I turned from the group of legionnaires and walked up the stairs to the second floor. Nala and I had opted to acquire a room for ourselves, while the men would rest on the first floor.

It was with minimal effort that when I fell upon the bed sleep took me. My eyes had already grown heavy from the antics of the day, and a full belly on helped push me along. In the distance I could hear the light sound of birds, while the sun outside settled and cast night like a veil across the sky.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

While I laid there my arms wrapped around the warm body next to me, I sighed happily while snuggled up against him without a care. The smell was familiar and comforting, and it made my sleep all the more peaceful while I laid there with eyes closed. If anything it was what I most needed after being bathed in blood and fighting a monster, a fact that was obvious to him based on what he asked.

“Rough day today?” Taryn inquired, while he laid there in bed next to me. He did not have his eyes closed but instead stared at the ceiling. One arm was wrapped around me while the other tucked under his head like a pillow.

“A sundrake attacked us, I thought everyone was going to die for a second,” I told him while I tried to burrow in deeper against his side. It was as though I felt the mere presence next to me would chase away all the bad feelings of the day. “I had to show my power to them, although I really wanted to keep it a secret until Alise taught me full control.”

“But you saved them, didn’t you?” his voice asked, a comforting tone.

“Yet now they’ll report what happened to others, and then the Legion will probably want me to join them full time,” I told him. How hard was it to not cringe at the thought of the Legion hounding me for help for the rest of my life?

“Do you really hate them that you’d turn away their ask for help?” Taryn inquired, he rested his lips against my head with the slightest bit of a kiss. “You know that you can’t say no to helping them, they’re a family to you aren’t they?”

“Not all of them though,” I muttered. “But if Rocky wants my help I think I’ll always say yes.”

For a while there was silence between us, while I rested comfortably against his body. He didn’t make any movements to grope nor touch me anywhere, but simply held me with a single arm and continued to relax on the bed. My body had begun to feel all the more energized with his mere presence, the absence of him in my life had left a hole that was hard to properly gauge until that moment.

“A sundrake though? Where do they usually live?” Taryn asked of me out of nowhere.

“The desert…it’s in the far north-east in the empire,” I told him. Knowing something he didn’t made me smile, as though a victory was won.

“That doesn’t remind you of something though?”

My eyes snapped open, and then I lifted half-up out of the bed and looked at Taryn. He was right, the sundrake being there made no sense. Sundrakes never were found anywhere close to the south-west side of the empire. Animals being that far from their natural habitat were such a rarity.

Taryn smiled at me, then swung out of bed and slowly walked over to the window which looked outside. He stood framed in the moonlight, before he opened up his hand and offered it toward me. “Come,” he said, then nodded his head at the window.

Without hesitation I slipped out of the bed and walked to him, taking his hand while he pulled me in close. Together we stared at the window, and at the world outside. At the horizon, the light clouds and the bright moon that nestled amongst it all. At something far off in the distance.

“What is she the goddess of again?” Taryn murmured in my ear.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

When my eyes snapped open I nearly exploded out of the bed, which caused Nala to scream out in fright. She watched in near horror as I ran to the window and looked out it, then recoiled as I rushed past the beds and nearly broke down the door. My feet were nearly the sound of thunder as I ran down the stairs of the house, so loud in fact that all the sleeping legionnaires stirred awake in confusion.

Rudicus had chosen to sleep in a comfortable looking chair near the fireplace, his sword rested on a table near the chair. Jesson was the one on duty, and when I almost fell down the stairs he looked at me and reached for his sword, the actions he saw made him worried I had become bewitched.

“Don’t worry!” I told him, hand up to caution him while walking to Rudicus. “Rudicus! Wake up!”

General Rudicus had already started to stir thanks to my noisy approach, and when I called out to him his eyes fully opened and he reached for his sword instinctively. The hand paused when he saw me standing there, he saw the almost wild look in my eyes and he squinted. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s better to show you,” I told him while walking toward the window, before turning and motioning to him.

Rudicus stood up, though he glanced at Jesson and made a slight nod. Most likely he had told the soldier to kill me if I did something completely out of character. He walked over in his armor to the window and peered out at the moonlit night, and frowned. “What of it? It’s a nice night.”

“There,” I said, while I pointed toward a distant object on the horizon.

Against the bright night there was a single thing that stood out as odd, a cluster of darkness that seemed almost to move. After staring at it for a few seconds it was possible to make out exactly what it was, a wriggling mass of darkness being only what it seemed like. In truth it was crows, so many crows that it created a black spot in the sky.

“They’re coming.”

 

Chapter 6 :: Here Comes The Rain Again

Rudicus stared out the window at the cloud of crows and then frowned, before he faced me. “What do you mean? The birds are coming, what does that matter?”

It was a fact that had escaped my notice, the legionnaire trained to fight the ordinary Plague and not whatever it was Nixi utilized. “The last time I saw a cloud of crows like that it was right before Vicna was attacked,” I explained to Rudicus. “Most likely there are two hundred or some odd Plague beneath that, and they’re coming this way.”

Jesson had approached us, though he stayed back out of arms reach as a precaution. “What do you mean the Plague are coming, there are no corpses here!” he declared, loud enough that the injured Braddicus stirred on the couch and started to wake up.

Nala had stepped down the stairs, garbed in a simple night gown although she held her dagger at the ready. She had been concerned with my actions and followed me, only to hear the word Plague while still half-asleep. “What’s going on?” she asked, blinking her eyes as though to shake off the drowsiness.

“I have to agree with Jesson,” Rudicus bluntly stated. He eyed the cloud of birds again, yet it barely impacted him. “There are no fresh corpses around here, and that could simply be a migration. I’ve seen it in the past before.”

A little voice rang through my head, one of warning that came from so far away. “Believe me, I wish it was otherwise but I know for a fact that it’s the Plague and they’re coming,” I told them, almost pleaded with them. “We need to get out of here before they arrive, if they catch up to us they’ll outrun the horses!”

“We can’t leave!” Nala exclaimed, before she pointed toward Braddicus. “He’s far too injured to be moved, if we put him on a horse even a slow pace will kill him!”

“Agreed, we can’t leave until Braddicus is stabilized,” Rudicus responded, before he lifted up a hand to halt my protests. “You might be High General Sciroco’s favorite but I can’t show you deferential treatment because you declare something to be fact. However, I will have Alex check on the gate when the sun comes up and see if it can be salvaged.”

To me they were being dumb, though he was reacting as he should based on the situation. The Legion faced off against the Plague every year but they never saw large groups that walked around on their own. Even at Vicna the size of the Plague attack had been degraded when Taryn baited so many of them away.

A knock at the door from outside caused every single person in the room to jump, and our gazes all turned in unison to look at the door. Another knock, then another came and finally a voice came from outside. “Help?” was the quiet voice, a voice that sent a chill down my spine.

Jesson moved to the door with sword drawn, and then inched it open even as I began to yell. “Yes?” he asked through the gap, he peered into the dark and could see nothing.

When the woman shoved the door open it was with a strength that shocked Jesson, he could only fall to the ground on his back while his sword slid across the wooden floor. Nala’s dagger lifted up into a defensive position, while Rudicus began to stride toward the figure even as he pulled his blade.

“Eat!” a voice cried from the misshapen thing that had once been a beautiful woman. Her hair had mostly fallen away leaving bald spots here and there on the scalp, while the skin was as pale as moonlight. What she was proved obvious to anyone with enough knowledge, a vine with thorns looked to be tattooed on her left arm. Her arms and legs were gaunt, they lacked meat and muscle, yet the woman seemed to have no problems with strength as she leapt into the room.

Before anyone else could respond a spear made of silver, with a bolt of crimson that jaggedly ran down the side of the blade, pierced into the head of the Plague. The force of the tossed spear was enough to carry the stricken woman all the way to the wall and nail her to it, her body gone limp. I strode across the room and wrenched the spear from her head, then flicked the gobs of rotten flesh and blood off of it.

“What the hell! The Plague don’t talk!” Jesson declared from the ground, even as I walked over and kicked the door closed.

“They don’t knock on doors either,” Rudics pointed out as he stepped over and helped the soldier up. Once he was up off the floor Rudicus turned toward me with a glare. “Since you seem to know what’s going on, maybe you want to talk about this?”

“The Plague you’ve fought aren’t the only kind that exist, some of them are smarter and faster and attack in small armies,” I commented. At that point in time the absence of Nixi’s name in the discussion never really triggered in my head. To me not talking about her felt like second nature, but later on I would begin to notice it didn’t make sense. Nixi was important information, yet I never talked of her with any of the legionnaires. “I figured they’d all arrive together though…”

“A scout?” Nala inquired from behind, she shuddered every time she looked in the direction of the dead Plague, the hold on the dagger so tight it made her knuckles whiten.

“Only one though?” Rudicus mused aloud, before he swore. “Not a scout! A decoy!”

He shouted that out as he ran toward the stairs, his sword brandished and ready to be used. Rather than taking the steps one at a time he leapt up them, bypassing half the stairs and climbing the rest in a split second.

Above there came the sound of a loud yell, one that reminded me of the only person missing in our group. From the couch Braddicus gave a shout, as he tried to force himself up into a seated position. “Don’t you dare!” Nala told him, her dagger pointed at him while she glanced at the ceiling.

“I’m on it, you two watch Braddicus!” I called out while running for the stairs. My spear shifted into a gauntlet on the right hand, one that had nasty looking spikes which ran across it.

When I hit the second floor there were already a bunch of the Plague there, three of them that blocked the hallway which lead to the distant bedroom. Even down the hallway the reverberations from the conflict were obvious, so I wasted no time in diving into the opponents before me. The gauntlet slammed out and ripped a head clear from the shoulders from the first, then before the second and third could pounce I manipulated the spikes to shoot out like lances.

Each of the remaining Plague were pierced by shafts of thin silver metal, their bodies quivered on the ends of the attack before slowly going still. When they no longer moved I retracted the blades, and then converted the gauntlet into a short sword. Before the weapon even formed I had already reached the doorway to the bedroom, the door itself completely unhinged and lain on the ground inside.

The sight within sent a cold chill through my body, there stood Alex with his body mangled by multiple spots he had been gnawed on, the culprits were in the process of being chopped to pieces by Rudicus. The general showed minimal concern as he swept through each and every one, quick swing that cleaved through the bodies with ease.

Yet there was blood which trickled from his right arm, the right hand in turn had a hint of red on it. He had been stricken by one of the Plague at some point during the conflict. While he finished off the last of the Plague he let out a long sigh, then turned to the fallen Alex and quickly rammed his sword into the head of the legionnaire. It was best for the dead to stay dead, after all, and Rudicus had no urge to watch his companion turn.

“Rudicus!” I called out as I stepped into the room, carefully maneuvering over to the side of the general. “You’re bleeding, are you okay?”

Rudicus grunted in response, as he sheathed his sword and then lifted up the damaged arm. The blood came from a gouge in his right arm in the shape of a bite, one that could only have come from a Plague. Before I could even ask he uncovered his left arm and exposed the forearm, which was blissfully free of any dark tattoo.

“I’ll leave this exposed, if you or any of the others see the mark appear kill me, I have no urge in suffering the sickness,” Rudicus bluntly stated. He glanced at the dead Alex, then walked away from him and back out the door.

When he left I could only stare at the room, the devestated chamber which would no longer be useable. There on the bed laid the deceased Alex alongside a few other of the Plague. The ground was littered with body parts and bodies that intermingled and made it hard to count the quantity. The windows on the wall had been left open, perhaps by Alex before he went to sleep. It was even possible that the Plague had simply slipped them open, with Nixi’s help they most likely had the intelligence to do that.

On the horizon the dark cloud of crows had grown closer, the birds more defined. The moon had begun to set and cast an even darker look across the canopy of the forest. When I walked out of the room there were no words of goodbye to Alex, but rather a hope that I would not become like him.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The legionnaires and I had relocated from the mayors house, the slow march through the quiet town nerve wracking as we had no idea when the next Plague would appear. By the time we reached the alarm tower near the center of the village the fire we had started in the mayors house had grown beautifully. The entire night sky was illuminated by the flames as they licked hungrily at the wood of the home, and even threatened to spread to some of other buildings.

Out of all the places we could go to the alarm tower made the most sense, it was always the sturdiest construction in every town. This one was constructed with a strong stone base and brick walls, with a wooden roof that held the large bell. There were no windows on the tower, the only point that allowed viewing the outside world was the bell chamber.

The size of the tower was not very large, with all of us settled in the bottom floor near the winding staircase it was a claustrophobic experience. Braddicus had been slowly lifted by Nala and myself while Rudicus and Jesson kept watch during the transit from the house, and then placed on the floor.

“Jesson, you’re taking a horse and heading to the east. It should take you about a day or two of travel but you’ll eventually hit a town, and once you get there find the nearest Legion barrack and get reinforcements,” Rudicus told ordered while Nala was in the midst of wrapping up his arm. “Do not stop to fight or play or anything, get on the horse and go.”

Rudicus looked to Nala, even as Jesson nearly ran out the door to follow his orders. “You’re going to need to go up the tower and settle in at the alarm bell. Anytime you see anyone who isn’t one of us you ring it, if it’s a Plague shoot them with your arrows. If it looks like they’re climbing the tower and going to reach you pull back and bar the door from the inside.”

My hand went up when Rudicus looked in my direction, I had already chosen my place in what was to come. “Don’t even bother, I’m going outside and guarding the main gate. I’ll escort Jesson to the horses, and then I’ll wait for the Plague,” I told him. Before he could even respond I had stood up and walked to the door, opening it wide.

“Are you insane?” Nala cried from behind. Braddicus and Rudicus echoed her sentiments, each yelled at me to rethink what I was going to do.

Ever so slowly I turned my head so that only the left side was visible, and I stared at them all with that singular eye. Nala cringed, Braddicus gasped and Rudicus frowned visibly at the crimson eye that looked at them. “Don’t worry, I have a score to settle with the Plague,” I told them before walking out the door.

The outside air was cool enough to help calm the slight boil that had started to build within. I did not hate the legionnaires but rather worried for them, they were not ready for what was coming. Jesson had ran on ahead as he didn’t know that I would step out, and so I followed him slowly while keeping my senses on full alert.

So far the horses were left unmolested, something that I had worried might have turned out different. He nearly leapt onto the horse in his hurry to get out of the town of Oakvale, a normal reaction in my opinion to the oncoming swarm of Plague. “Jesson!” I called out to him while walking closer, though I stopped far enough away that he wouldn’t feel crowded.

“What? Liliana, what’s going on?” he asked while he climbed onto the horse, taking the reins in one hand. He kept his other hand on the hilt of his sword, while suspicious eyes looked at me.

“I know that you were taught the basics of the Plague, that they’re slow and dumb but don’t listen to any of that,” I said. “They’re going to be fast, faster than your horse maybe and they won’t ever slow down. Even if you stop to kill one or two there’ll be a swarm on your tail in a matter of seconds, so don’t stop!”

Jesson guided his horse forward slowly, nodding his head toward me in confirmation. “Thanks for the info, if I make it to the town alive I’ll bring back as many men as I can so try not to die!”

The horse bolted to the gate of Oakvale, and then it whisked out and dashed off toward the east without pause. The man on the back of the horse crouched down onto the backside of his steed, eyes squinted half-closed with an obvious look of fear on his face. When I couldn’t even hear the sound of his horse as it galloped away I walked to the destroyed gateway of Oakvale.

There was little time that remained and I had work to get done, so my Shatterblade was formed into a giant ax. An hour later the trees closest to Oakvale had been chopped down and resized, then turned into a makeshift wooden barrier where the gate used to be. There was only a single small hole in it, one that was small enough for two people to stand side by side. The Shatterblade shifted form once more, this time converted into a war hammer.

It was there that I stood, leaned against a war hammer that was easily greater than my own size. To the east the sight of the rising sun greeted my eyes, a wonderful light that painted the sky in multiple hues which lifted my spirit slightly. For a moment I stared at it, closed my eyes and let out a long tired sigh, then fatigue that had built up claimed me momentarily.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

“Are you ready?” his voice asked, while his hand rested on my shoulder. He stood next to me, though his gaze was set on the northern horizon of the forest.

“Can you ever be ready for Her?” I asked of him, my eyes closed and body tired. In truth all I wanted was to sleep more, I did not want to deal with the nightmare again.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, this time his question held more urgency to it.

“Of course I am, if I get devoured by her you won’t be here to stop it,” I honestly replied, my eyes opened and I looked up at Taryn.

“Didn’t I tell you, Lily?” he spoke, before he did his sad smile at me and patted my head with a gentle touch. “You hold a part of me, forever. Nixi can never hope to touch you again, unless you cast me away.”

The honest words that he gave to me made my heart lift upward, and then I smiled back at him. It wasn’t hard to understand why he was saddened by his actions, he had never asked me for permission before splicing our souls together. No matter what happened we would always be attached to each other in a way that ascended the physical.

“You won’t get rid of me that easily,” I responded.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

I snapped out of the daydream with a lurch, nearly falling to the ground. My eyes blinked and with a start I turned to look toward the sound that had awoken me, as the great bell in the alarm tower rang loud and clear. My grip tightened on the war hammer, even as I stood up straight and glared toward the northern horizon.

When the dark figures emerged my left eye once more blazed a crimson hue. Already the arrows started to fall from the heavens as Nala took aim and fired, though the distance was such that half the arrows missed. She was obviously panicked by the sight of the dozen or so Plague who had already emerged.

Their approach was not as fast as I had expected, they moved forward cautiously as though expectant of some sort of trap. Even as they stepped along slowly I made no move to meet them in the middle, for the moment I wished to hold the makeshift chokepoint. It was thanks to that slow pace that Nala managed to hit even as many as she did.

As the first of the Plague came up close to my little gateway the hammer flashed out and smashed the poor thing backward ten yards. The body hit the ground and did not stand back up, while a short while later a few more Plague were tossed back to join their fallen brethren. With a twist of the wrist I whirled the war hammer about, and then planted the end of the handle against the ground once more.

The Plague paused as they stared toward me with the white eyes that showed no emotion, the eyes that had a Goddess lurking behind them. Perhaps she could recognize me and realize who I was, or maybe it was merely a normal reaction for the Plague, because every single Plague loudly hissed at me. Even from the great forest behind them all came a loud hissing noise as hundreds of Plague all sounded out.

From the forest emerged dozens of Plague, each ran toward my direction with a speed that put most horses to shame and was all the more surreal to watch due to their human bodies. Their approach was so quick that Nala could only watch from the tower, her bow and arrow completely useless against such distant and quick targets.

There was a valid reason why I had chosen to abandon the other legionnaires within the alarm tower, and it was not out of hatred nor spite or even pity. It was fear for their wellbeing, a fear that even Taryn had felt in regard to me during our first fight against the Plague. When the war hammer fell and struck the ground the entire area nearby me shuddered, part of the wall itself collapsed.

The charge of the Plague stopped as they toppled over in the loss of their balance, a few tumbled along the ground for an extended while. Most of the Plague recovered quickly but it was already too late as I had lunged into their midst, war hammer swung out and smashed their skulls in a fashion that it was like when one took a hammer to a nut.

Nala who was so far off could only feel awe, and perhaps then fear as she watched me fight. When my strikes landed the force of each blow was enough to send a shudder through the air and ground, and every shove off of the ground with a foot left a deep indent in the shape of my boot.

It was the power that made me so fearful for the legionnaires, with a quick shift of the Shatterblade I whipped around a gigantic broadsword which sliced through three Plague in a single arc. More and more began to pour from the forest, all of them came at me with that unnatural speed even as their mouths gaped open.

To the left I swung the blade, a few heads cleaved from the bodies flew through the air. To the right I swung the Shatterblade and the weapon cut through two spines before stopping in a third body. The Plague pressed in around me, hands reached out in hunger from all directions, their presence foul to both the nose and the soul.

The Shatterblade shifted once more, this time into the form of a giant scythe. The handle of the weapon was thin with a blade built into the upper part of the shaft, while the main blade was long and definitely not designed for handling wheat. Instead I wrenched the scythe around in a circle, the weapon cut through all of the Plague with such ease it was almost scary.

The blood and guts of dead bodies flew all over the area, while my own body was smeared in the toxic smell of the Plague. A few cuts had already been gained on my arms, the clothes that Nala had lent me starting to tear apart. The Plague who remained saw me with that odd weapon and yet they had no interest in retreating, instead they pressed in.

On my left the Plague had already broken down part of the makeshift log wall I had erected and a few filtered into the depths of Oakvale. Arrows began to fall once more as Nala shot each of the encroaching Plague with a well placed shot, though she would soon run out of ammo. The Plague had no qualms with walking over the corpses of their own kind, which created a growing mound of dead bodies in the vicinity of the gate of Oakvale.

There was no time for me to worry about the alarm tower, instead the emergence of even more Plague drew my attention. The Shatterblade shifted form once more and took on the form of two swords, one per hand. Before they could press in I abandoned my post in the chokepoint and leapt for the Plague, weapons flashed out in quick strikes.

The first one was sliced open along the front vertically, then while it fell down I stepped forward and stabbed the left sword forward. Into the neck of another Plague it was pierced, before I wrenched it out to the left and chopped a third Plague nearly in half with the mere removal of the weapon.

My right foot snapped up and to the side, it crushed into the chest of a Plague and sent it flying back into a few others. From behind a Plague grasped onto my leg, it had crawled up to me and managed to catch me by surprise. Before I could even kill it the monster bit my leg, which I responded to by stabbing it in the head with my left blade.

More of the Plague came at me and I could only rip free from the rigid grip of the dead body, before stumbling backward away from them all. The right blade swung out and cut off a few fingers from one outstretched hand, but for the most part I was too busy recovering to do much. It was an opening the Plague took advantage of as they lurched in at me with an almost blinding speed.

To the old me it would’ve been my death, the seven or so Plague who reached out with mouths gaped open could’ve easily ensnared me and torn me to shreds. The new me though was able to take it all in stride, their speed was fast but not so much I couldn’t respond to the attack. The left sword swung out and cut off an arm, then I stepped in toward the unarmed Plague and left the targeted center point empty. The other Plague crumpled together with a sickening noise, even while my elbow shot out and smashed in the head of the Plague I had closed in against.

The fighting continued for what felt like an eternity, every time one fell another two would appear to take the empty spot. The Shatterblade went from a hammer all the way through to a long and thin sword that looked like it would easily break if stopped by any other weapon. Yet the thin longsword was easily one of the best weapons I had at my disposal, the range it offered plus the inability for the Plague to catch the blade made the fighting all the easier.

When the fighting did come to an end there was a giant pile of dead bodies on which I stood, with a few other mounds scattered around the entryway to Oakvale. My boots squealched loudly as I walked over the corpses and back toward the alarm tower, a worried expression on my face as I could no longer see Nala on top.

The arrival at the alarm tower was a joyous one though, as I noticed right away that Rudicus was alright. He stood near the doorway with his own pile of dead Plague grouped up on the ground nearby, though he had suffered no more injuries. The door behind him was slightly open, a scared Nala peered out at him and myself.

“Stop right there!” Rudicus demanded as he leveled his sword at me, then he lifted up his left arm which was still bare.

My body was covered in guts and blood of corpses, it was a putrid state of being that made me want to run to the nearest river and jump in. When he offered up his arm at first I was confused, he was fine so why did he waste time showing his arm?

It was when Nala opened the door a little more and gave a slight gasp of shock that I started to suspect something. With a flick of the hand and a snap of the fingers my Shatterblade shifted back into the regular twin rings that clinked on my left wrist. Perhaps it was that which drew my attention, or where the two legionnaires looked but in the end I couldn’t help but stare at my arm.

At the long black tattoo of a vine which had crept up.

 

Chapter 7 :: Everything Turns Out Perfect

The first emotion I felt was panic, on my arm was the clear sign that the Plague had gripped ahold of me. Taryn was nowhere nearby and in front of me were legionnaires who normally murdered the infected without a second thought, even if the infected were their friends or family. Rudicus took a step toward me, both hand gripped the handle of his sword as he lifted it up.

“Wait wait!” I cried out to him, lifting up my right hand and motioning for him to stop. I took a step backward, and looked once again at the dark mark on my arm. “Just…give me a few seconds here.”

My skin had yet to grow pale, my eyes were still blue and so it was that Rudicus paused for a moment. He frowned toward me, though he kept his sword lifted in case I tried to attack him or make a run for it. “Do you really want to be a Plague that badly?”

The last time it had happened I really did slowly fall into liking it, though that was due to the persuasion of Nixi. She was like a drug that forced herself on you, and yet this time even though the mark was visible no sign of Nixi had shown. I turned slowly to look around, my head tilted as I tried to listen to anything and everything.

Her voice never came, her touch never appeared, her body never showed itself. Somewhere in the distance I could almost hear something, as though a cry for attention which sought my love and gaze desperately. A familiar voice sounded even closer, a whisper in the ear which made me shiver. Without thinking my right hand went to the arm, to the marking on it and slowly slid along the bumpy textured black mark.

My fingers dug into the flesh, the nails cutting out a slight flow of blood. Rudicus could only gape in confusion while Nala squeaked out a half-cry of horror while watching. My fingers pinched together and gripped hold of that black vine on my arm and then began to rip it away, piece by piece in a slow painful tear. Blood continued to squeeze out of the new wound as I ripped away the root of evil from my arm, teeth clenched tight while pain roared from the injury that was created.

“What are you doing!” Rudicus yelled at me, though he made no move forward to strike. All he could do was watch on with wide eyes.

When all of the black vine was torn free from my flesh I threw it to the ground, and then stomped on it over and over again while yelling loudly. There were no words specifically used, it was merely my hatred toward Nixi which fueled the shouting. After almost a whole minute of this I stopped, breath ragged while I tried to recover my composure.

“Mind if I borrow some bandages?” I asked of Rudicus, while I gripped the bleeding arm with my right hand. “I’d rather not bleed to death.”

Rudicus gaped at me, he had never in his entire life seen someone tear the Plague from their body. The mere fact that I had done so refused to even make sense, it wasn’t possible to remove an infection like that. Yet I had done it, or at least seemed to have done it. “Nala…bandage her up, but she’s not coming inside,” Rudicus told the legionnaire.

Nala’s approach to me was hesitant, her hands shook while she slowly started to wrap the bandages around my arm. Her eyes constantly looked from the injured arm to my face, as though she expected to see pure white eyes at any second. “Don’t worry, I’ve dealt with worse,” I told her in an attempt to comfort her.

Nala tried her best to smile at me, though it was a smile ruined by the fear in her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want us to kill you since you’re infected?” she asked, before she started to work on the other injuries on my body. The bite marks, the cuts and the various abrasions were all carefully attended to by her.

“I’m not infected,” was all I could say in response, before I sighed loudly and looked up at the sky. “General, mind if I go wipe off in one of the houses? I think there’s still some water barrels left aren’t there?”

“You can go if you want, but you’re not allowed inside the tower without my express permission,” Rudicus told me. His sword was still drawn, though he held it low at his side. “Rest up, we still have a few days before reinforcements show and if you’re still you by then…well, it’d be nice if that happened. Oh, if I see you trying to leave the town I’ll have Nala shoot you full of arrows.”

Nala pulled away as she finished the first aid, and I nodded to her in thanks. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. If the Plague shows up again you’d probably end up dying,” I said with a smile.

Without waiting for his response I turned toward the burnt down houses of the village. The large fire that had consumed the mayors home had spread over half of the wooden structures and devoured them, leaving only a handful to pick from. A single floor house that was off to the side was the one I opted on, when Rudicus and I had scouted the village it had looked cozy enough.

An hour later my dirty clothes were stripped and I once more cleaned myself off, while the morning light of the sun filtered in from outside. Inside that small little abandoned house I could only look in the mirror of the bedroom and stare at my face, at that sliver of crimson in my eye. “This is going to be a long wait,” I murmured to myself, before stepping over to the bed and throwing myself into it.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The tea was warm and gentle, it had a slight flavor of lemon to it which almost made it sour. The tint of sweetness from the drizzle of sugar that had been added to it helped to offset that, and along with the light pastries on the dish the overall meal was delicious. The air was fresh and the sun shone bright in the sky, while the grass around the table and chair rustled in the breeze.

“Is your arm doing alright?” Taryn asked from the side, he was in the middle of swinging that pure white sword over and over again with his right hand.

“I’ll live, though it’s definitely worse than last time,” I told him, while fiddling with the cup. There was no real need to drink from it, if Taryn was here then I already knew exactly what was going on. “Why did the mark appear? I thought you said she couldn’t infect me again.”

Taryn paused in the middle of a swing, then faced me while planting the tip of the sword against the ground. “She can never touch you is what I said, I never said she couldn’t try. What she did to you was like standing on the other side of a window and looking into someones house. Spying on what you’re doing, trying to figure out what your plans are is the most she can do now.”

The mere thought of Nixi staring in the window at me made me shudder, though I tried to chase that unpleasant feeling away by gulping down the tea in one go. “Were you the one who guided my hand then?” I asked him.

“Yes,” was Taryn’s simple response. “I’m sorry but it was the easiest way to remove her presence. If you let her linger near you then she’ll know where you are and what you’re up to.”

“The next time don’t you dare force me to do something like that!” I yelled at him. “It was almost as bad as when She took control of me and treated me like a toy!”

Taryn could only look away from me, a hint of shame on his face. “I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do that again unless you ask for my help.”

While glaring at Taryn I threw myself back into the chair and crossed my arms over my chest. Somewhere off in the distance I could hear a noise like someone knocking on a door. “Also why are you showing up like this? Are you pulling me into your dreams or something?”

The response from Taryn was one that I hadn’t anticipated in the slightest, he stared at me with a confused expression. “What do you mean? You mean you don’t realize it?”

The knocking sound sounded, closer and louder, as I glared at Taryn. “What do mean realize it?”

“I’m not the one pul-” was all Taryn could say before the knocking noise drowned him out.

My eyes snapped open to the sound of someone beating on the door to the house I was in. It was a frantic, loud repetition which made me instantly leap out of the bed. With no clothes on I grabbed the sheet on top of the bed and wrapped it around myself, before walking to the door and flinging it open. “What?”

It was Nala, she held her bow in one hand while the other was still half-raised as though ready to continue knocking. The eyes she had looked a bit frantic, afraid and dots of sweat were visible on her. “Oh thank god, I thought you were dead or turned,” she admitted while she stepped back quick from the door. “General Rudicus wants your presence at the tower, Jesson is back already.”

“I’ll be right there,” I told her before closing the door.

When I dropped the sheet it was obvious to me that I required clothing, and given that it was a house that meant stealing some. The dressers were filled with men’s clothes, large and loose which made for an easy fit on my body. A belt I found was cinched around my waist to help hold the pants up, while I stole a fresh pair of boots.

The loose fit boots and the obnoxiously ill-sized clothes made me look a bit silly as I walked out of the house, though there was little choice given the situation. Nala would not have an infinite supply of clothes I could ruin, and I didn’t want to spend hours looting through all the houses for clothes which did fit.

Outside the smell of burnt wood had finally started to dissipate, while wind had begun to swell from the south-west and carry away the stench of the dead Plague. The ones who had assaulted the alarm tower had been moved to somewhere else, though I wasn’t sure who had done the moving. The gateway remained a vision of hell with the corpses everywhere, guts and limbs oozing with rotten blood.

While I walked toward the alarm tower it was easy to make out the figures of Rudicus, Bell, Nala and Jesson as they talked back and forth. Jesson’s arms were a bit more animated than I might have expected, his face contorted into one of fear. Every few words he would pause for a split moment to look over his shoulder toward the gateway, then return to talking to Rudicus.

“That’s close enough,” Rudicus told me when I walked up to the group. He nodded toward Jesson, and then opened up one hand waved it in the general direction of the forest. “Jesson here says he was ambushed on the way to the east, some sort of monster he had never seen before.”

“It wasn’t a monster, it was the tree,” Jesson stated in a clear voice, before he glanced toward the hole in the wall again. “The wood itself separated away and tried to grab ahold of me. It got my horse, I had to run back here on foot while it chased after me.”

My mind worked fast as I tried to figure out what he was talking about, but the mental lexicon of monsters I had acquired was still pretty abysmal. Most of my information derived from creatures found primarily in the center of the empire and had been gained via the Legion. A glance at Rudicus and he shook his head, he didn’t know what Jesson was talking about either.

For a moment we could only stand there, scared by that unknown which had apparently hunted after Jesson. If it was a creature that came from the trees, from the wood then it might be the reason why the entire town had gone quiet without warning. An entity that could slip into a wooden house and grab people before they knew it.

“This is bad, if we don’t know what it is then how can we fight it? And why the hell are there things like sundrakes and armies of Plague and this new monster here!” Jesson cried out, before he slumped to the ground.

“When will reinforcements be dispatched if we don’t report back in?” Bell asked as she turned to Rudicus. During the earlier fight her absence was due to standing guard over the injured Braddicus, though given her concussion she needed to avoid fighting. A strong enough blow would possibly kill her, or worsen her condition to the point of near death.

“We can’t expect something like that for at least two months,” he told us before he let loose a long and ragged sigh. “I figured this wouldn’t be an easy mission since three towns went quiet, but this is beyond anything I could’ve expected.”

“I might have a way to figure out what’s going on,” I admitted quietly, there was no distinct urge to try what I was about to do. “But you have to promise to keep this a secret from others. That includes Sciroco.”

“Very well, I think we can agree to promise that, so long as your idea isn’t turning into Plague or killing ourselves,” Rudicus told me honestly. “What’s the plan?”

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Bell and Nala had both returned to the tower, Nala to make sure that Braddicus was fine and Bell to help stand guard over the both of them. We had decided to leave nobody alone after learning about the new threat which was on the way, though when it would strike we had no clue.

Jesson, Rudicus and I had retired to the house which had become my own personal apartment. Inside there was a small table with a few chairs, and so we had seated ourselves at it while Jesson raided the cupboards for food. He placed a few pieces of bread on the table along with a type of jam, though Rudicus served me the food.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Rudicus asked, it was not the first time and the question had begun to annoy me.

“No, I’m not, but we don’t have many other options here do we?”

“Jesson, keep your sword at the ready and stay back,” Rudicus ordered him, while he also pulled out his sword and placed it on the table in front of him.

While Jesson pulled his weapon out and leaned against the wooden wall, I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Focus was important, concentrate on what was needed and let nothing else distract yourself. It was the first time I had ever tried to do this, and it would hopefully not be required again.

When my eyes opened again Rudicus flinched, while Jesson gasped in shock. Unbeknownst to me both of my eyes were now a crimson red, rather than simply the left one. The world itself felt odd, as though my body was not exactly in the room that it was but somewhere else. “Are you sure you want to be doing this?” my voice asked myself, a question that made Rudicus raise an eyebrow.

“I’m sure, we need your help,” I told myself, though it was not myself but Taryn. “Are you willing to give it?”

“Since Nixi is playing games with you guys it seems I have no choice,” Taryn stated with my voice. “Is this that young general guy who Shorty mentioned?”

“I’m General Rudicus, yes, and by Shorty you must mean that fellow who was at the Rose families dinner?” Rudicus inquired, he kept hold of his sword though his body had relaxed ever so slightly.

“Yeah that’s who Taryn is talking about,” I told him, before I leaned back in my chair. “Taryn we’re under attack by a wood creature that ambushed Jesson. Any idea what it could be?”

“You’re asking me to identify a monster that I haven’t seen, and you simply describe it as a creature?” my voice asked, with a hint of scorn in it. “I need details on what it looked like at the least.”

Jesson cleared his throat before he spoke up. “It was about five feet tall and thin, but with arms and legs like a regular person. It tore itself out of a tree like it was part of the trunk itself, and had holes in what I think is the head that reminded me of hollowed out eye sockets and a circular mouth. Fast, but not fast enough to catch me when I ran away on foot.”

“Mm, don’t recognize that one but Alise might, give me a second,” Taryn said, before I felt a slight twist. Rudicus’ head tilted to the side, before he pointed at his right eye.

“Your one eye went from blue to red and now it’s blue again, is that a side effect of this?” he inquired.

The fact that it was my right eye gave me a bit of a shock, I knew that my left tended to turn red during fights but the right had remained normal. Before I could voice anything I felt a mental knock, as though someone wanted to be let in through a door. The only way I could describe the sensation was that I had a door in my head, one which I opened and in came Taryn. My right eye twitched a little, and then I felt his presence again.

“Alise says she recognizes what it is, though you should be running right now,” Taryn told us with my voice. To hear my voice saying words that I didn’t choose to speak was a feeling that made me skin crawl.

“Alise? What are these things?” Rudicus almost demanded of Taryn. “We can’t run either, we have a man too wounded to be taken anywhere!”

“Alise is the woman who helped train Taryn and I,” I explained to Rudicus, before I felt him mentally push me out of the way. “They’re Dryads, they originate from the jungle wilds to the far south. The last time Alise fought them she almost died, they’re way too dangerous.”

“They?” Jesson voiced from the spot near the wall. “How many exactly?”

“Apparently they travel in broods of about six or seven,” Taryn said. “Alise said they look like wood but they’re actually flesh and blood beneath the armored exterior, however the shell they wear is as hard as steel.”

“What about the way they came out of the tree? Would they have been able to take people away without anyone knowing?” Rudicus asked, as he started to stand up. The sword he had lain on the table was raised and sheathed back at his side, he no longer worried about the plan I had offered to him. “Plus your combat capabilities.”

“They’re able to pass through any wood like it doesn’t even exist, and they can latch onto trees for sustenance until something with meat walks by,” Taryn told us. He cleared his throat, his tone almost growing apologetic. “Their combat capability is beyond anything you can handle. If you stand and fight you will die.”

From outside we could clearly hear a scream, the voice recognizable as Bell. Without caring what Rudicus or Jesson thought I stood up from the chair and started to walk to the door, though Jesson was first out of it. The sight he saw made him recoil, he stepped back inside and lifted his sword up defensively.

“What do we do now?” he whispered, while I peeked out the door to see what had spooked him. Rudicus stepped up behind me and also peered out the door, so the fact that his breath caught in his throat was clearly audible to me.

Outside in the middle of the grass rested Bell, her body bloody and her armor torn away. From out of her body came the roots of a small tree that grew upward toward the sky, a wooden construct that had an oddly familiar shape. The alarm tower in the distance had a leafless tree that had somehow sprouted outside the door, one branch uplifted as though trying to knock on the door.

As we looked out the wooden shape shifted, and the humanoid body twisted to stare at us with hollowed out eyes.

 

Chapter 8 :: From Oakvale To Rivers Edge

We stood frozen in place while the dryad turned to look at us, those hollowed out eyes staring directly at Jesson. With a sickening wet noise the roots slipped free from out of Bell’s body, while the dryad took a single step in our direction and emitted a high-pitched whine. The dryad nearby the alarm tower paused, turned slowly and then started to walk toward us as well.

Jesson’s reaction was a simple one, he slammed the door shut and almost crushed my head in the process. “Careful!” I yelled out to him while staggering away from the shut door. “Next time warn me before you do that.”

Jesson’s breathing was fast, his eyes wide and he looked at me with such fear obvious on his face that I felt bad for yelling. “What are we going to do?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

“We can’t stay here anymore,” I declared, even as I felt a slight wrench and stumbled. My hand went to my head, it cradled the right side as a small ache spread outward. “Dammit Taryn…”

“Agreed, but we’re going to need to be careful,” Rudicus said as he backed away from the door and wall. His sword was gripped in his right hand, and his gaze had drifted to me. “Are you going to be fine?”

“Yeah, he left pretty fast for some reason,” I told him, as I rubbed at my right temple. “What’s the plan?”

“First we’ll have to clear the dryads that are out there,” Rudicus said, his gaze never wandered away from me. “Then check on Nala and Braddicus, and hopefully we can get to the horses and make a run for it.”

“General, why aren’t they here yet?” Jesson asked, his voice still trembled with fear. “Didn’t that guy who was in Liliana say they can pass through wood?”

It was a question that made both of us pause and look to the walls, then slowly scan the entire house. “They can’t be that slow can they?” I wondered.

“Jesson at the ready!” Rudicus barked, before he stomped over to the door and flung it open. Jesson lifted his sword up and braced himself, expecting some horrid event to happen.

For a moment I expected that the dryad would be right there, waiting to grab him and pull him away. Instead what greeted him was a clear view of the grass outside, and no type of wooden monsters lurked anywhere. “Bell’s missing!” Jesson noticed first, though he made no move to walk out of the house.

Rudicus waited a few seconds and then bravely stepped out first, his sword at the ready while he began to steadily walk toward where Bell had fallen. He paused, kicking gently at some reddened grass, and then turned all the way around. “It’s clear!” he called out to us, though he never once relaxed. “Jesson, check the tower!”

The scared legionnaire managed to recuperate enough to follow through on the order, though he hesitated in taking his first steps out of the house. Once nothing grabbed ahold of him he ran full tilt to the alarm tower, and then banged on the door loudly. “Nala is it clear in there!” he yelled out.

When the door opened Nala stood framed within the doorway, her long dagger grasped tightly in one hand. It visibly shook while her eyes had a look of terror, and even from a distance it was easy to see how heavily she was breathing. When she saw the three of us she relaxed, though not enough to stop shuddering in fear.

While I walked out of the house, a slow steady pace, I cast my gaze everywhere. To the left there were the smoldering ruins of some of the houses we had burnt down, while to the right was the destroyed gate of Oakvale along with the pile of corpses. Nowhere could I see any dryad, yet that didn’t mean they weren’t close.

“Where’s Bell?” Nala asked while her eyes started to tear up. “She heard something out there and went to look. Then out of nowhere she slammed the door shut while yelling!”

“Bell’s gone,” Rudicus told her, his jaw clenching ever so slightly. “We need to evacuate immediately, get Braddicus as ready as you can. I don’t care if he’ll die, if he stays we all die!”

Nala’s attempt to argue against moving Braddicus was instantly cut down before she could even speak, and she could only turn away and go about her duty. Focus on the task at hand, don’t let the emotions get to you. It was an easy thing to say but to some people it was in no way as simple as that.

“Jesson, get the horses!” Rudicus barked at him, a hint of anger in his voice. “We’re going to ride as hard and fast as we can to the nearest town.”

Jesson mutely walked to the horses, while he had been happy to see Nala was alive the reminder of Bell cut into him. The horses were still visible, hooked up to a post near the alarm tower, and each horse showed no sign of fear over what had befallen us. When Jesson reached them he talked to them gently, then slowly began to untie their reins.

“General, I think we’ll need to take a different route out of town,” I told him. “That pile of corpses will slow us to a crawl if we try to go through it, and they’ve already ambushed Jesson once on his way to the town.”

“It’s not like we have much choice in the matter though, it’s either through that hole or nowhere,” Rudicus responded, he planted the tip of his sword in the ground and glared at me. “Or do you have more secrets you want to share?”

“You saw me cut that sundrake’s head nearly in half right? I’m going to do that to the southern wall, then we can skip out and keep heading south,” I told him.

Rudicus paused, then nodded his head. “There’s a river down there and if we follow it for a short bit to the west we’ll reach one of the other towns that went quiet, a fishing town.”

“Exactly, we’ll boat our way down the river to the next safe town, plus if we’re using a boat it means Braddicus can rest up.”

“General!” Jesson called out as he led the horses over to us, before he lifted up a hand and pointed at our transportation. “We don’t have enough for everyone, there’s only four!”

Rudicus looked at the horses with a hint of shock, even though Jesson had lost one horse we still should have plenty due to Bell dying. “Did they do that?” he murmured, then shook his head. “Then I’ll stay, Jesson you’ll have to take charge.”

“Wait!” I cried out with one hand lifted up. “I can probably keep up with you guys on horseback.”

Rudicus slowly turned his head to look at me, then frowned again. “I’ll refrain from asking how you can do that,” he said. “Go clear us a hole, we’ll load up and then head out.”

A quick salute was my response to him before I walked in the direction of the burnt houses. The pathway through to the southern edge of the town was still clear, and so in a matter of minutes I had stepped up to the wooden wall that served as a barrier for Oakvale. A glance to the left and the right relieved me of the belief that the dryad might have been waiting for me there.

A slow deep breath was how I started it, my concentration focused and I could feel the blood pumping faster with every second. Snapping my fingers the Shatterblade was brought to bear, converted into a long and thin blade. The noises around me slowed, the air flow itself grew to a crawl and then I swung the blade out in a flash of strikes. Each sliced deeply into the wall, yet the wooden structure showed no sign of collapse.

“Alright then!” I half-yelled, before the Shatterblade shifted once form once again. The weapon I grasped was the war hammer from my previous fight with the Plague, and as I swung it at the wall I took a step forward, attempting to add a bit of weight and momentum to the attack.

The result was devastating, the entire wall exploded outward away from Oakvale and caused a few trees to be knocked over in the process. The slicing from before had left cuts all up and down the wall, making it easy to shatter the wood into shards and chunks. For a while I stood there and smiled at what I had done, before the sound of horse hoofs pounding at the ground came to my ears.

“Lets go!” Rudicus bellowed as he rode in advance of everyone, his body leaned forward in an attempt to add to the speed of his steed. Braddicus came next, his face pale and his one arm wrapped about his chest. Nala was right behind him, she had only her dagger and had left her bow behind.

Jesson was the last to arrive and his eyes were a bit wider than they should have been. “Move it! They’re right on my tail!” he yelled to me.

As if in response to what he had said the weird shriek of the dryads came from the center of the town, far more than a single source could be heard. It was without regret that I turned and bolted after the legionnaires, not casting a glance over my shoulder for fear of what I might see.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The next few hours were filled with dread, as no matter how fast I ran the sound of the dryads haunted my ears. Jesson had said they were slow, but if they had given Alise trouble that seemed unlikely. If anything they were probably holding back, though why they would do that I wasn’t sure.

A little after four hours of running we reached the river, a wide and deep body of water that raged loudly. The noise of the dryads had ceased a short while before then, and so Rudicus called for a halt so we could let the horses rest. Riding them too hard for too long would kill them, and once they died the dryads would devour us easily enough.

“Are you doing alright?” Braddicus asked, even as he weakly smiled toward me.

Nala had helped him down from the horse and laid him out on the ground, all of which had brought cries of pain from him. He had yet to cough up any blood but his pale skin and beaten body made him look half-dead. At least one of his cuts had reopened, the bandages around his body had started to turn red once again.

Attempting to answer Braddicus taught me quickly that I was not alright, so all I could do was flash a thumbs up at him. My belief that I could keep up with the horses had been right but it also drained me, if not for the rest period I would’ve collapsed less than an hour later.

While Nala removed Braddicus old bandages and then applied new ones Rudicus walked up to me. He gripped my arm tightly and dragged me toward the waters edge, though not so close that we could fall in. “You’ve impressed me, taking down that wall and keeping up with a Legion bred horse were something I thought only your father could do.”

My body shuddered as I gasped in some air, and then I cleared my throat and tried to speak. “Easy as cake,” was my response, though the words came out slowly.

“So easy that you’re about to collapse,” Rudicus pointed out, before he pointed at the river. “Until we get a boat and get on this I can’t afford to lose a fighter like you, so we need to make a decision here and now.”

“We’re not abandoning anyone!” I managed to declare, louder than I wanted to since both Nala and Jesson turned to look. Braddicus on the other hand merely gave a sad smile, as he fully knew who would be the one left behind.

Rudicus cuffed me on the back of the head for that outburst, before he started to walk over toward his horse. His voice when he spoke was louder than necessary, mostly since everyone needed to know. “You’re riding with Braddicus, we’re slowing our pace down a little. We still have a full day of running before we hit the town.”

After an hour Rudicus called out for us all to mount up. I was first up on the horse, and then Braddicus was placed in front of me as though he was a babe I had to cradle in my arms. “I’m in your care it seems,” he groaned out in between spasms of pain.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t fall,” I told him, before reaching past him to grab hold of the reins. “Lets go!”

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Rivers Edge. The furthest out fishing village in the entire empire, it was so far out that it was viewed as technically outside the borders. Because of that the Legion were never deployed there, most didn’t even know it existed due to how unimportant it was. Any slavers who tried to make use of the absent legionnaires were greeted by a deadly militia.

When we reached the town Rudicus took the lead, as he rode his horse into the middle of the village and cried out in a loud voice. While we sat there and waited no other sounds came save for the light noise of wind chimes, a door that creaked in the breeze and a few cats meowing. Somewhere a dog began to bark loudly, then it went quiet.

All in all it was a creepy place, there were no signs of people and nothing to indicate that there had been a struggle. If it had been the dryads they had come in quietly and easily, snapped up the townsfolk and then left without mussing up anything. Rudicus could only shake his head in sadness at the absence of life.

We rode the horses to the docks and then clambered down, while Jesson was sent to secure a boat capable of carrying us down the river. Nala and I helped Braddicus down, and then laid him carefully on the dock. He no longer cried out in pain, either due to having grown accustomed to it or simply not having the energy.

Once more Nala had to change bandages, though her face looked grim while she did it. “Don’t worry, we’ll be safely out of here soon,” she promised him, though our hope for such an outcome was minimal.

As Nala cared for Braddicus I walked over to Rudicus and joined him in watching out for the dryads. He glared in every direction, his distaste for our adventure so far was quite obvious. “So, are you going to explain why you can talk with someone who’s weeks away?” Rudicus asked, his tone unfriendly.

With a snap of my fingers I brought the Shatterblade back out, into the form of a longsword. I thrust the blade into the wood of the docks and then leaned against the handle. “It all started in Vicna. You know about Vicna, right?”

“Yes, an unusually large amount of Plague showed up and did damage to the town. The Legion dispatched your father along with reinforcements for their garrison.”

The thought of my father made me sigh a little, there were times when I actually wished he was with me. Sadly those were usually the times when I was in most need of someone who could murder people. “I lied at the dinner party,” I admitted to him. “I wasn’t able to get away from the Plague in time.”

For the first time since I had walked over to Rudicus he turned and looked at me, one eyebrow raised upward. “Yet you still stand here.”

“Taryn was with me, we fought over two-hundred Plague according to him,” I said, before I shook my head a little. “Honestly I can’t remember how many I killed, it was one long stream of butchering and being bitten and clawed and fighting for my life. In the end I was infected, and Taryn managed to remove the infection.”

Rudicus’ right hand came to grip my shoulder tightly, while he leaned in a little. “How! Nobody has ever cured the Plague, how could some unknown man do that!” he almost screamed in my face, the eagerness of wanting to know overriding his anger and fear.

“I’m not allowed to say, but it’s not happening again,” I told him. “That’s why I was able to tear the infection off of my arm, the Plague can’t stick to me. Curing me caused a few side effects though, which I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“The abnormal strength for a young girl, the red eyes, the talking over long distances,” Rudicus said, before he nodded his head and released my shoulder. “I won’t force you to answer anything more. If you hadn’t been here we would all be dead by now.”

“General!” Jesson cried out from nearby, and as we turned we saw why he wanted Rudicus’ attention.

Jesson stood on a mighty vessel that looked capable of carrying all of us, and perhaps one or two more people. It was designed for the rough rapids that the river would sometimes turn into, though it had been created to be rowed and as such required at least two people to move it upriver. Our plan was to head downriver, though, so we could simply let the river push us along.

“Alright! Good find Jesson!” Rudicus yelled, before he sheathed his sword and motioned toward Nala. “Braddicus and Nala, lets go! We’re loading up and getting out of here. Leave your horse, we don’t have room nor time to care for them anymore.”

A shriek sounded from nearby and all of us turned to look at the source, at the wooden figure who stood not twenty feet from the docks. It was the size of a man with a thick body, thick arms and thick legs. The legs ended in stumps which had roots that thrived and flopped around, as though a tree had chosen to walk around using the roots to move it.

My grip tightened on the hilt of my longsword, and then I pulled it slowly from the wood of the dock. “Get to the boat, I’ll meet you on it!” I hissed out to the others, before I lifted the tip of the blade up and pointed it toward the dryad. “Leave this to me!”

“You heard her! MOVE!” Rudicus bellowed as he roughly picked up Braddicus and dashed for the end of the dock. Nala was right on his heel, and while I stood between them and the dryad they all loudly clambered onto the boat. “Rope is free! We’re moving, Liliana!”

When I began to turn toward the boat the dryad moved, and it was not in a way I had anticipated. The dryads are slow Jesson had said, and it made a little bit of sense given how wooden they seemed. Yet they were flesh and blood, the wood was merely a camouflage and armor.

Before I could recognize what had happened the dryad was already right next to me, one long wooden arm stretched out to grip ahold of me. From the end of it came worm-like tendrils, each one pointed and dripping with a liquid I couldn’t recognize.

The sword came up and sliced off some of the tendrils, while the creature shrieked loud enough to make me wince. I staggered backward away from it, before tripping and falling to the wood planks rear first. The dryad had recoiled away from my blade, green liquid dripped from the cut stumps and began to drizzle onto the dock.

Once more it did that move where I could barely follow it, it reminded me of how Alise would seem to teleport about whenever she felt the urge to move rapidly. This time I was ready for it and rolled backward, while a hefty leg smashed down onto the planks of the dock and splintered them. The creature shrieked at me, and then stepped forward while outstretching more tendrils from the left arm.

When I rose up from the ground my sword was lifted up, and with a strong swing I tried to cleave the left arm of the dryad in half. The face I gave after that was one of shock, as it was the first time in a long while I had managed to barely dig into the exterior of my target. The blade had lodged into the arm, it drew more of that green liquid but for the most part looked to have caused no damage.

The dryad swung the left arm, knocking me away and dislodging the sword. Without warning the ground beneath me gave way, as I stepped off of the dock entirely and tumbled into the cold water of the river. When I rose up out of the water I spluttered, hand gripped tight around the hilt of my sword.

From the dock the dryad watched, as it continued to ooze slightly from the small wounds I had given it. The hollow eyes studied what happened as Rudicus and the others fished me out of the river, and then when all of us turned away for a second it vanished. Somewhere in the middle of Rivers Edge the sound of more than one dryad screamed out, as though warning us that the chase had not been given up.

While I gagged out some water and laid out on the deck of the boat Rudicus stood over me, and he grinned down as though he found something hilarious about this situation. “You’re ruining your imitation of Sciroco,” I told him, before I snapped my fingers and changed the Shatterblade back into my favored metal rings.

“At least I don’t look like a drowned rat. Now stop resting and get up, we need to man the oars and move this bucket along faster.”

 

Chapter 9 :: The Trees Come Marching

Laughing at other people who have narrowly escaped death is perhaps one of the worst things you can do. Yet there sat Taryn on the edge of the boat, laughing as loud as he pleased after I told him about what had happened thus far. The tale involving the dryads had started in the town of Oakvale, and his serious expression during most of it seemed fine.

When I spoke to him about how I’d kept up with the galloping horses he nodded his head, he found this pretty ordinary instead of as surreal as it should be. Talking about the arrival of Rivers Edge had even made him almost eager to hear me, he was totally riveted on my face while I spoke. At long last I reached the point where I fought against the dryad on the dock, and as soon as I mentioned falling off into the river he broke into laughter.

“It’s not funny!” I told him outright, and in truth it wasn’t. The dryad had thoroughly scared me and falling into the river had not been part of my plans in the slightest. It was probably luck that I did, as the dryad had given me a feeling that alone I would lose.

Taryn merely shook his head at me, he didn’t even bother defending himself and instead kept on chuckling. When the tears had started to appear in his eyes he began to get a grip, his laughing fit having run it’s course. With a single wide grin he turned his gaze to me once more before speaking. “So you managed to escape then?”

“Yes,” I said even as I nodded my head, before stretching out my arms and legs and laying on the deck of the boat. “We should be arriving at Mastille in a few days. It has stone walls and a small legionnaire detachment, according to Rudicus.”

Taryn snorted at the mention of Rudicus, before he looked off into the misty distance. “As soon as Alise heard you were in a fight with dryads she kicked me out of the orphanage and sent me north, to your moms. I should be arriving there sometime soon, I think,” Taryn told me, before he shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, so that’s why you left like you did…please don’t do that again, I had a headache for the rest of the day,” I said, before I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. “When you reach my house get ahold of Diana, merely mention my name and that I’m in trouble.”

“I thought your mother was Esmeralda?”

“Diana is the head maid, my mother will probably ignore you,” I warned him. “Diana can persuade her to actually listen.”

“Your family is so weird,” Taryn muttered.

“Oh! And you have to promise to not kidnap anyone!” I declared, as I propped up on my elbows. “Everyone in my house is a slave, but if you kidnap any of them my mother will rip your head off.”

The mention of slave was enough to send a dark glimmer across Taryn’s face, though he turned it even further away from me. “I won’t…so that’s why you were so confused by my actions in Vicna,” he commented. His boots started to thud quietly against the side of the boat, while the legs dangled over the edge.

“Yeah…all the slaves in my home are treated nice, and given wages and allowed to go anywhere they want,” I admitted. “The worst I’d seen were some slaves who acted up in public, thieving openly or causing violence. I never even imagined how the rest of the empire was…”

For a few minutes there was only silence while we rested in our respective spots, and then Taryn swung his legs back onto the deck of the ship and stood up. “There’s only one thing I can’t figure out…you said that Jesson lost his horse and managed to get back to you guys, right?”

A question to which I could only nod, while I began to tilt my head. “That’s right. Then we ran south out of the town and headed west to Rivers Edge.”

“The dryad followed you to Rivers Edge, and you were attacked almost immediately upon arrival right?” Taryn asked, as he leaned slightly forward. There was a certain intensity in his eyes as he stared directly at me, enough at least to make me want to squirm.

“We had enough time to find a boat, and then it was on us,” I responded, while looking back at him with a slight hint of confusion.

“Which means it was fast enough to keep up with the horses, faster than a man running on foot. You even said it was almost as fast as Alise when you tried to fight it,” Taryn murmured, before he turned his gaze toward the eastern horizon while the boat wallowed in the river.

What he was starting to hint at, what the entire conversation would inevitably lead toward was a thought I had had a few moments prior to falling asleep. It was a single thought that when uttered aloud would ruin any hope of having a peaceful, pleasant boat ride down the river. Yet instead of stopping him from speaking I merely stared at him, mute while I awaited his words.

“Why did they let Jesson escape?”

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Our arrival outside of Mastille was met with no fanfare, as nobody in the town had anticipated anyone arriving via boat. When the river bent toward the direction of Mastille and we could clearly see the docks, Rudicus directed our ship into an open pier and had Jesson throw down a rope to one of the dockhands.

It took almost no time at all for a litter to be called for, and Braddicus was placed on it while he wheezed and moaned. He had managed to avoid dying on the boat ride but his overall status had not bettered, which made Nala’s face darken with every passing second. All of us could only watch him each day while he struggled to recover.

The local garrison were lead by a fellow named Tiltain, a man over average height and overall average capability. He had been placed in charge of Mastille a few years prior and was still somewhat new to living on the fringe of the empire. The arrival of General Rudicus, one of the youngest generals in the history of the Legion, caused Tiltain to become quite unnerved.

Before we even walked anywhere Rudicus began a quick explanation of what had happened to us, why we had been dispatched to the area and the severity of the situation. Tiltain grew paler with every word that he heard, and then finally held up a hand and begged Rudicus to stop. Before Rudicus could probe him for information the garrison leader turned and started to walk toward Mastille, while waving over one shoulder for us to follow.

While we walked into the town, the young Tiltain began the long rundown of the current status in Mastille. The wall was crafted of stone with wooden gates, there were only two gates which were located on the north and south edges of the town. The garrison had a total of ten legionnaires not counting Tiltain himself, while the population were farmers, fishers and hunters. A small family of miners had moved in recently and set up shop, although they hadn’t been heard from in the past few days.

“Consider the family dead until they show up,” Rudicus bluntly told him, before he waved at me. “This is Liliana Rose, if she tells you to jump then you do so. Consider her my second-in-command while we operate in this town. Prepare for a total shutdown of Mastille.”

“Shutdown! We can’t do that!” Tiltain claimed, while he waved his right hand wildly. “If we shut down the town then our food stores will run out after a week! This place was not designed for a siege situation!”

Rudicus paused in his walking, we had entered Mastille and gone perhaps a quarter of the way toward where the garrison was housed. The look he directed toward Tiltain was enough to make even my blood freeze, and then when he spoke the words came out quietly. “Shutdown the town.”

Tiltain’s response was to salute toward him, before he hurriedly ran away in advance of us. “Idiot,” Rudicus muttered, before glancing over in my direction. “Come on, we need to check up on Braddicus.”

The garrison was housed in a small, squat building near the center of Mastille. It looked to barely be capable of holding eleven men, and so the presence of six soldiers standing outside while looking in the windows made far too much sense. Rudicus nodded toward them, though he made no move to salute nor talk to them.

When I walked by they barely glanced at me, their eyes were on whatever was happening inside the barracks. The interior of the building was as shabby and poor looking as the exterior, which made me wonder what sort of horrid things these soldiers had done to get deployed out here. The floor was wooden, though some parts had fallen into disrepair and started to even rot.

Rudicus boldly stomped through the door on the right, which lead to the room that the soldiers outside were so keen on looking at. Inside Nala stood over the injured form of Braddicus while she barked out commands to the two men inside. The personality reversal was such that I stood in shock, and then looked to Rudicus for an explanation.

“She never wanted to be a soldier,” he murmured to me, before he nodded at Nala in greeting. “Nala, report please.”

“Doesn’t seem that any of his ribs punctured a lung, but he might have some internal bleeding. Given the primitive conditions of this barrack I’m doubting they have a proper kit for surgery,” Nala told him, before she glared angrily at the two soldiers in the room. “Apparently some idiots decided to bet legionnaire equipment during local card games.”

Rudicus’ face took on a look that made me pity whomever he next ran across, and when he snapped his finger and pointed at a soldier the man jumped immediately to attention. “Where did Tiltain run off to?”

“Sir!” the soldier said as he saluted, though he looked shaky on his feet. The combination of an upset Nala and an enraged General Rudicus seemed to have made quite an impact on his young mind. “Tiltain probably ran to his office, further inside. Given the situation he’s probably drinking.”

“Nala, keep them from killing Braddicus, Liliana take those oafs outside and go shut down the gates. Try to coordinate with the local hunters, get some men up on the walls with bows and arrows,” Rudicus commanded, before turning to the door and walking out. “I need to go talk to someone.”

By the time I left the barracks the sound of a shrill sounding Tiltain crying for help could be heard coming from within, it seemed that Rudicus had opted to teach him the hard way how poorly he had handled his duties. Outside of the building I pointed at the soldiers and sent four of them to the south gate to lock it down. The other two I dragged along with me while heading to the north entrance, while asking them for information on the local hunters.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Later that day I stood on top of the north wall, staring out into the empty plains that stretched out ahead. On the outskirts a forest grew, the same that grew into the great deep woods which surrounded Oakvale. Even from this distance the mere look of a tree caused me to shudder, every time they swayed I thought it was another dryad coming.

An archer by the name of Eran rested in a chair he had dragged up the ladder, as though to prove to the world that no matter where he was he’d always have it. He was considered one of the better hunters in the town and pointed out numerous weakpoints in the walls. The normal townsfolk were pressed into helping to patrol, with a legionnaire in the group of each in case something happened.

“So you think we’re in trouble?” Eran asked, as he drank from a flask which contained the hottest, nastiest thing I had ever tasted in my life. The fact that he had multiple flasks all filled with the same thing made me wonder what type of stomach he had.

“Yes, these dryad things are completely different from anything I’ve had to deal with,” I told him honestly. The Shatterblade had been converted into a spear, one which I leaned against while listening to the wind. “I’m not sure how effective your arrows are going to be, they have a pretty hard skin.”

“Everything has weak spots on the body, even the snappers,” Eran pointed out, while he offered his flask to me for a second time.

My hand came up instantly to ward it off, I had only a drop of it previously and it was more than enough for the rest of my life. “I’d say their weak point is probably going to be the holes in their faces, or maybe the bends of their elbows and knees?”

“Makes senses, makes sense,” Eran said as he nodded his head. “Well if you see one point it out and then I’ll try to thread a needle with my arrow.”

“Just watch for a walking tree,” I commented, then pointed with my hand out in the distance at a small tree on the edge of the forest. “Kind of like that, except moving.”

Eran had been in the midst of drinking when he paused, and then stood up from his chair. He slid the flask into a loop on his belt, reached down to the quiver of arrows next to his chair and pulled it out. A long, almost exaggerated pull of his bow followed this as he prepared to fire the arrow, then tilted it up high enough that I could only wonder where he was aiming.

The arrow flew through the air in a great arc, it was the furthest I had ever seen an arrow shot and made me wonder how much power his bow held. With a quiet whistle caused by the style of fletching the arrow dropped and then collided against the distant tree I had pointed at, before bouncing off and hitting the ground.

With a shudder the tree started to twist, and then slowly step out into the field. Two empty holes for eyes stared out across the landscape at the city walls, and a third hole that marked the mouth emitted a cry that was more shriek than anything else.

Eran spit in the direction of the dryad, before he grinned and looked at me. “So exactly like that eh?”

 

Chapter 10 :: The Calm Before The Dance

“Sound the alarm,” I ordered Eran, as we watched the dryad stomp slowly across the flat plain toward the town.

The hunter nodded his head, while picking up his bow and pulling out a clunky looking arrow. He pulled it back, then released the arrow up into the air in the general vicinity of the plain. While it arced through the air it emitted a high-pitched screech that warbled randomly, and became all the worst when at the tail end of the arc before it hit the ground.

The dryad continued the slow approach, an approach that I knew was nothing more than a lie. It was far faster than that, in truth it could probably reach the wall before I could respond in time to stop it. Yet there it was, almost nonchalantly strolling forward over the grass while tilting it’s head left and right.

“Why’s it taking it’s time?” I muttered, while I hunched over near the edge of the wall. The Shatterblade had remained in the form of a spear, I felt that cutting would be unreliable against the dryad and hoped penetration was all I needed.

“Well you said they were sitting back and letting you run away didn’t you?” Eran asked, while he pulled out a steel-tipped arrow, and stared out at the dryad. “Seems like it’s playing games.”

“Maybe,” I responded, though I felt like there was still something wrong about that idea. “Alright well once it gets within leaping range I’m going to try and attack it, once I jump try to shoot it in the eyehole.”

“Easy,” Eran commented, his gaze almost permanently locked on the dryad.

From the south end of town we could clearly hear the alarm arrow of another hunter, as it was fired up into the air. That meant they too had encountered at least one dryad, which would leave Rudicus and Jesson as the main fighters against it. Nala was still working on healing Braddicus, and so had opted out of fighting.

A small group of local hunters began to gather nearby the bottom of the northern wall, they all yelled up if we needed help and I gave a shake of my head. “Check for any dryads sneaking in, this one might be a decoy!” I called out to them, before returning my attention to the matter at hand.

The hunters yelled up a confirmation and split up, one group heading along the eastern part of the wall and the other to the western end. Hopefully they would be smart enough to then head south and follow it all the way to the southern end of town. A sharp hiss came from Eran and it made me focus hard on the dryad, who had made one of those unusual jumps when I wasn’t watching.

The distance to the wall had almost cut in half, and Eran began to lift his bow up in preparation of drawing back the arrow. I leaned forward, my right leg muscles bunched up and I summoned as much power as I could, letting it build. When the sensation felt right I unleashed the power, causing a small chunk of the top of the wall to rip free and fly backward. My own body was thrown forward with enough force that I reached the dryad before Eran could even let his arrow loose, and my spear rammed hard dead center on the creature.

The dryad rocked backward from the impact, the spear penetrated into the right side of the chest and poked out the back. Green liquid poured from the wound as I ripped free the Shatterblade, then leapt back away from it. Upon landing I was in a crouch, one hand braced against the ground while the other gripped my weapon.

What came from the dryad was not the strange shriek from before but a harsh cracking noise. The way it sounded called to mind when I was younger and camping near a forest while training with the Legion. A bolt of lightning had come down during the middle of a storm and splintered a tree apart somewhere within a mile of us. The raw power behind the cracking noise had been enough to cause shivers throughout my whole body.

The left arm swung out and sent a shower of needles, a move that caught me entirely by surprise and left me with only the option of raising my arms and spear to guard. The needles drove home, digging into my flesh while a few bounced loudly off of the metal spear. At first the pain in my left arm was severe, enough that I hissed loud enough for even Eran atop the wall to hear.

Then the pain in the arm began to numb, and my eyes widened as I remembered the odd liquid I had seen dripping from one of the dryads previously. The spear was stabbed blade first into the ground, and then I ripped the spikes out of my left arm and threw them as far away as possible.

By the time that the spikes had all been removed my arm was already limp, non-responsive as it dangled pointlessly at my side like dead weight. With my right hand I tore the spear from the ground, and then pointed it in the direction of the wounded dryad.

The creature had taken a few steps toward me, though the body shook violently while green liquid continued to ooze constantly from the hole that went through it. The hands swung up again, but no spikes emerged and instead it could only wiggle little tentacles at me. Once more one of those painfully high-pitched shrieks came from the dryad, and then an arrow sprouted in it’s left eyehole.

The shot was well placed, it came in from above and ended up landing at an angle that barely fit into the exposed hole. The shaft of the arrow along with the feathers were clearly visible, while the arrowhead was completely submerged into the darkness of the dryad’s eye. With the arrow having struck home the dryad could only screech again in pain, that loud splintering noise.

Before the monster could fully recover I threw the spear at what I assumed would be the stomach, and the silver-colored weapon slammed hard into the exposed body of the dryad. The creature doubled over and was tossed backward, along with the embedded spear, due to the sheer force of the attack.

“Ho! You okay down there?” came the voice of Eran, as he leaned over the wall and yelled down to me.

“I’m fine, it applied some sort of poison to my arm! I can’t move it at all!” I shouted back up, though I dared not to look away from the dryad who had been lain out on the ground.

It rested there on it’s back, the shaft of the spear jutted out from the body to announce where it was amongst the grass. A slight shudder came from the spear, and then it began to sway wildly as the dryad began to move once more. A cry of surprise came from above, which was followed by the sound of a bow firing once more.

Another steel-tipped arrow sank into the dryad, though this time the monster did not cry out. Instead it merely laid still on the ground as though accepting the fate it had been dealt. A few more arrows slammed down into the body from a high angle, nicely placed by Eran from atop the wall.

After a few minutes I walked forward to the potentially dead dryad, and ripped the spear from the body yet again. This time it made no movements nor noises and instead laid there, while the flow of green liquid from within had begun to taper off. One arrow had embedded itself into each of the eye sockets, while the other arrows were shallowly stuck into the chest.

Better safe than sorry I decided to ram the spear into the head and body of the dryad a few more times, though no reaction came from what was apparently a corpse. With one final stab into the dead center of the body I yanked it back and forth, widening the wound, and then ripped free my weapon once more.

A few moments later I was back on the wall, having leapt up from the ground and landed next to Eran. Upon landing I immediately sagged to the ground, using the spear to keep from falling all the way down. The numb sensation in my left arm had spread a little bit, but seemed for the most part concentrated where the thorns had impaled my flesh.

“Are you going to be okay?” the hunter asked, as he pulled out a flask and offered it to me.

My hand immediately went up and blocked off that potential reward for killing a dryad. “I’ll be fine so long as you don’t force that stuff down my throat,” I told him bluntly. Then I pointed to the chair which he had been using. “Mind if I take a rest break on that?”

Eran nodded his head, before taking a short drink from his flask. “Don’t know why you don’t like this,” he muttered, before turning to look out at the plain. He squatted down, while humming quietly to himself.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

“You should go see a doctor about that,” Taryn said, as he stood next to the chair and looked out at the field. “You might be tougher than the normal person, but don’t get lazy in taking care of yourself.”

I waved at him dismissively with my right hand, though the fact that the injuries to my left arm persisted in the dream bothered me. While I could actually wiggle the fingers and move the arm, the obvious bloody holes drilled in by the thorns were enough to draw Taryn’s attention immediately.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a scratch. We managed to kill one dryad, I’m expecting General Rudicus handled the one to the south as well,” I told him, getting him up to date on the happenings.

For some odd reason Taryn stiffened at the mention of Rudicus, before he stepped over to the edge of the wall and peered over it. “Interesting place you dragged me. Well, on my end I arrived at your home earlier today and I was in the middle of talking with your mother,” Taryn told me, before turning about to face me. “Then you pulled me in, hopefully your mother is lenient in regard to people going comatose in front of her.”

“Wait…I dragged you in?” I asked, recalling how he had started to say something along those lines previously but never fully explained.

“Figures you didn’t know,” Taryn commented, before he sighed. “I don’t know why but you keep grabbing onto me and yanking me in. Sometimes I’m asleep when you do it and sometimes I’m not asleep.”

It was information that made me feel quite uncomfortable, and I looked down at the ground to avoid looking into Taryn’s eyes. “I’m sorry. You said you’re at my home, though? Why did Alise send you there?”

“Dryads are apparently something that Alise considers too dangerous to allow anywhere close to the empire. The only reason she fought them in the past was because Mathias wanted her to have experience against them,” Taryn told me, before he started to walk over to me. “She wants me to inform Esmeralda about their presence, and to spread the information about them along with a few other monsters to the Legion. This is the first time Nixi has ever actively maneuvered her pawns into absorbing whole towns, as well as using something on the level of the dryads.”

“You don’t think it’s because of what we did, do you?” I asked, as I finally lifted my gaze up to look at Taryn’s face.

“You’re the first person to ever be cured, I’m sure she’s furious,” Taryn said, before he gently patted my head. “I need to step out now, before your mother gets angry enough to punch me awake. Anything you want me to tell her?”

“Let her know I killed one of the dryads,” I replied, with a smile on my face. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear that.”

“Strange though…they’re supposed to work in groups and not alone,” Taryn murmured as he turned away and walked toward the edge of the wall. “Keep your eyes wide and ears open, something is still off.”

Before I could respond he was already gone, leaving me alone within the confines of my own dream. For the first time in a while I yearned to wake up, and curled up into the little chair that belonged to Eran.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Later that day Eran and I were relieved from our guard duty on the north wall. Eran waved bye to me, he headed off into the western part of town where his house was located. I on the other hand headed toward the center and where the poorly designed barracks could be found.

It had taken a few hours of rest for my wounds from the dryad to properly heal, and we had received a quick message from the south wall that everything was under control. So when I walked into the barrack and Nala’s makeshift hospital I was taken aback by the condition of some of the people within, the obviously broken arm of Rudicus’ and the fact that Jesson had his head wrapped up while he slept on a cot.

“What happened!” I cried out at the sight of my injured companions. I walked into the room and gently closed the door behind me, before crossing my arms in front.

“It was a bit faster than we expected,” Rudicus admitted, as he tentatively touched at his arm and winced. “I’ll be fine in a few weeks, Nala said Jesson will be good to go in a day. What about on your end?”

“Eran, the hunter I was paired with, and I managed to kill the dryad that showed up at the north gate. It was acting weird, though, I figured it’d just rush in and kill instead of slowly approaching,” I commented. “Oh, it has an ability to shoot out spikes which have some sort of paralytic and numbing agent.”

“I know, one of the hunters who was helping us got hit with it and went down, spike hit him in the chest and he wasn’t able to breath.”

While we talked I began to scan the interior of the room, and noted that Nala was huddled up in a corner on her own cot. Her face was buried into her arms, while her knees were pulled in while she sat rather than laid on the makeshift bed. Nearby her, laid out on the floor, were two exhausted looking legionnaires who had been terrorized by her since our arrival.

“Before I split up with Eran I talked about making some sort of ballista. He said he’d talk to some friends, given the legionnaires here we can probably get one or two up in no time,” I said, before looking to Rudicus for his opinion.

“A ballista would be good, I noticed that the ordinary arrows worked on the dryads. If they move in as slow as this time then they’ll be easy to handle,” he responded, before he nodded his head. “I’ll have that useless idiot Tiltain help construct it. Some hard labor would probably help shape him into someone better.”

“How’d someone that bad end up being the leader of a garrison?” I wondered aloud.

“Simple, his family is rich so they probably bribed someone to give him an easy job,” Rudicus explained. “Sometimes I think it’d be nice to gut the people who are constantly bribing one another.”

A quick laugh was my reply to that comment, before I shook my head and turned to the door. “Alright, Eran offered me a nice place to sleep so I’ll be close to the north wall in case something odd happens. If you need something send a messenger.”

“Good luck out there, I’ll need to sit back and let the younger kids handle the fighting for a while,” Rudicus told me. “It seems like the south side will need the main bulk of our forces given how capable you are.”

With a wave of my hand as my only means of saying goodbye, I stepped out of the room and shortly thereafter the barracks. While I stepped through the town I noted how quiet it had become with the fall of the sun, and wondered if it was a common change for the place.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

“Two days,” Eran muttered from his favorite chair, placed once more on top of the north wall of the town. He glared out at the plain in front of us, and the forest which rustled in the distance whenever the breeze swept past.

“It is weird isn’t it?” I asked of him, while I leaned once more against my Shatterblade. It was in the shape of a spear, I had found the form fitting for the durable foe we should be facing at that very moment.

“The last one just walked up and basically let us kill it, yet now there’s none? Are you sure there’s more than just the two that have been killed so far?” Eran inquired. “Maybe your source was mistaken?”

“Doubtful, it’s one of the few people who has faced the dryads before,” I told him. I sighed while shoving away from where I stood, taking the spear with me. The path I took was a short circle that paced around the chair Eran sat on, something he found annoying but had opted out of openly complaining about. “Nothing about any of this is making sense to me. They’re so fast yet sometimes they’re not, they follow us and don’t attack and then sometimes they randomly do. They’ll steal horses, but is it planned or mere coincidence? They attack the walls and yet only do it once, and one at a time on top of that?”

“Plus those rumors lately, how people are going missing in town,” Eran pointed out. He pulled out one of his many flasks and began to drain it, the conversation had brought out the thirst in him. “Those aren’t dumb families either, they know better than to walk around without weapons when monsters are nearby.”

“Yet no dryads are sighted in town or near it, there are no entry points beside the north and south gate,” I pointed out, before I paused in my walk and glared out at the forest. “You don’t think they can fly do you?”

“No wings, plus they look a bit too heavy for that,” Eran stated. He rubbed at his chin with his free hand, while putting his flask away on his belt. “Something though…there is something. What was it…”

“Well we know they don’t have catapults, I think we’d notice something like that being rolled up outside the walls,” I told Eran, though I chose to ignore his random words near the end. If he was trying to remember something any attempt at helpful comments would probably worsen it.

Eran stood up from his chair, his fingers snapped loudly before he looked at me with wide eyes. “I can’t believe I forgot it! This is a town on the fringe, it’s the only place you can come that has legionnaires in it so tons of merchants love to swing down here and buy and sell goods.”

Before he could continue speaking a noise came from the south, a familiar noise that made my hair stand on end. The screech of a dryad that sounded so close it could only come from within the walls of the town. Another screech came forth from the depths of the town, then more followed suit two seconds later. Before long all I could hear was the loud cry of the dryads as they began their invasion. The only thing that managed to sound out over the screeching was the cry of Eran, as he tried desperately to explain something.

“There’s a smuggling tunnel that leads outside!”

 

Chapter 11 :: The Cobra Effect

The cry of the dryads was a noise which interlaced with the alarm arrows that numerous hunters fired off, while the noise of people as they panicked and screamed desperately tried to be heard over the chaos. From the north wall both Eran and I could clearly see a surge of citizens as they ran away from the south-western part of the town, which was where the warehouses were located.

Before I could even react Eran had already bolted to the ladder and begun a quick descent, his haste so severe his hands slipped on a few of the rungs and almost sent him down far faster than he’d want. “Where are you going?” I called out to him, while leaning over the edge.

“My family!” he responded, before he hit the ground and started to run immediately. He headed off to the south-east, in what I could only assume was the direction of his house.

Eran was not a legionnaire, the only reason he and the other hunters had even helped was due to necessity. With the invasion of the dryads it made sense that he would want to run to his family, to protect them, and so when he took off I held no distinct hatred for him. If anything I hoped that everything would turn out fine for Eran, he had been helpful and a fun fellow to talk with.

So I was left with only one course of action, which was to turn to the south and prepare for battle. If the dryads had used a smuggling tunnel to get into town it meant that the hunters and their bows would be far less useful. I lowered my body down into a slight crouch, while the power gathered in my legs and I focused southward.

The leap that I utilized was far longer, stronger and more impressive than the one which I had used against the dryad previously. The top of the north wall crumbled from the backlash, while the point of impact when I landed broke instantly. Stones which had been paved into the ground of the street could only disintegrate when my feet touched down, and then I leapt off again.

It took four long jumps to reach the center of the chaos, and when I landed on top of a roof the wood splintered hard and left one of my feet lodged in it. Below on the streets the people had mostly run away, the only ones still present were legionnaires who were in the midst of trying to buy time for the evacuating civilians.

The streets were thin, wide enough for two people to stand side by side at best. Below me and to the left were two legionnaires who stood with swords drawn, shields raised up defensively. Down the path and to my right three dryads slowly marched through the street with that odd cry of theirs ringing out.

From my place on the roof the sound of other dryads crying easily reached my ears, making it obvious that there were far more than the three visible to me. So obvious that it sent a chill down my spine, there was no way that the town could handle more than one or maybe two dryads at once.

Unlike previously the dryads this time showed no interest in playing the cautious game, when I blinked two of the three had already swept up the path and attacked the legionnaires. Their arms slammed down hard on top of the uplifted shields and drove the two men to the ground through sheer brute strength.

The third dryad drove in faster than either of the legionnaires could follow, it stepped past its own allies and then swung up the arms to the outside. Each arm struck a legionnaire in the head and sent him flying away, both men smashed into the walls with enough force to leave imprints. It was fast enough that neither man was able to call out in shock, all they could do was collapse onto the ground.

Out of the three dryad I opted for the one who had last struck the legionnaires to be my target, and when I leapt up into the air with spear in hand my eyes were locked onto that dryad. When I landed it was on top of the dryad, a move that caught all three by surprise given how none of them made any hostile move toward me.

The spear was uplifted and then driven down hard into the top of the dryads head, angled so that it would become like a second spine to the monster. The blade dug in deep, and when it started to show resistance I redoubled my efforts and shoved in even harder. A tingle of warning as my instincts cried out, and I lifted my body upward on top of the spear itself, while one of the other dryad’s arm swung where my ankles had moments ago been.

With the added weight of my full body the spear sank deep enough into the dryad, a careful shift of my center of gravity and I forced the creature to topple forward. When my feet touched down onto the actual paved ground I tore the spear free from the dryad, then looked to the other two. The first was fast enough that it almost crushed my head, a quick swing of both arms which resembled someone clapping their hands together.

A duck was the only way to avoid that attack, and when the arms slammed together where my head had been the noise of it was deafening. My right eye half-closed as I winced from the pain and noise, but I barreled through the discomfort and lunged at the dryad with the spear extended. The weapon sank straight into and through the torso, and I released the shaft of the Shatterblade and stepped back.

“Starburst!” I exclaimed while lifting my right hand up and snapping my fingers. My mind was focused on a single image, what I wanted from the Shatterblade.

The shaft of the spear slipped into the center of the dryad while the blade on the other side did the same, all of the metal of the Shatterblade focused into a sphere within the confines of the dryad itself. From that sphere two foot long blades shot out in all directions, similar to a porcupine, before the sphere rotated rapidly in place. The dryad that the Shatterblade was housed inside could only make an odd gurgling noise before it collapsed to the ground.

The final dryad present could only look at what had happened with those odd hollowed out eyeholes, before it gazed at me and let out a long, melodic tune. It lunged at me before I could even snap my fingers to recall the Shatterblade, heavy wooden arm swung into my face with enough force to send me staggering backward. A hint of blood came into my mouth, yet before I could even respond to that the dryad had already hammered my back from behind.

If it had been the previous year I would have died at that moment, the power of the blow enough to send me off the ground and flying for a good five feet. When I hit the ground the momentum sent me in a tumble across the paved ground, before I collided with a stone wall that belonged to a house. The wall proved useful as I relied on it to help keep my balance while I stood up, and then immediately swayed to the left when a flicker of movement crossed my peripheral vision.

The stump that could only be called the end of the dryads arm slammed hard into the wall, cracks formed instantly due to the power of the blow. The dryad had removed me from the vicinity of the Shatterblade and so I was forced to fight with my hands, a strong punch was directed at the stomach area. My own hit landed, yet it seemed to hurt me more due to how hard the shell of the dryad was.

Both arms of the dryad lifted up, a sloppy and easily read movement, and so I cartwheeled to the left alongside the wall. The dryad hammered the ground, causing fractures and sending a few shards of rock up in all directions. Right hand lifted to ward against any stray rocks, I studied the dryad in search of some type of weakness.

The creature did that faster than can be followed movement, once more it stood in front of me and was already mid-swing by the time I finished blinking. The blow came from the left, and my arm was barely able to stop it from smashing my face in. Once more I staggered from the impact, the dryad already prepared to attack by the time I refocused entirely on it.

With a quick back step I avoided the next arm swing, while the dryad was forced to spend a few moments recovering from the failure to connect. It was a bad situation, if I ran for the Shatterblade the dryad would be on me long before reaching the weapon. Any attempt at retreating would be met with the same type of fate, and sitting around to fight it head on seemed to be a lesson in futility.

There was only one choice, and it was one that might have side effects according to Alise. A deep inhalation of air, and I lifted my hands up to about chest height. The hands curled into fists, and I stared at the dryad with as much focus as possible. A deep intake of air, a slow exhalation, a deep intake of air, a slow exhalation. Again and again this happened and with each breath the world slowed more and more, the sounds quieted down and all I could see was that monster in front of me.

It is almost like reaching into your chest and ripping your heart out, the level of discomfort and the sensation of pain was enough to nearly disrupt my concentration. The air near me began to cool, as though a small cold front had swept into the town. The dryad which had been so aggressive moments before stopped in it’s tracks, and then tilted the head to stare at me.

A moment too long it waited, as a few seconds later the sensation of a biting cold coursed over the dryad. The jungle based creature was shocked by the rapid change in temperature, and then the feeling of the cold itself gnawing at the exterior and even interior of the body caused it to go into a panic. It flailed, and then started to back away from me while it emitted an odd quiet noise which pulsated at random.

When I lunged forward at the dryad the aftereffects of my movement caused the nearby building to almost explode away, while the ground itself was ruptured and sent stones hurtling at an alarming speed. My right fist swung forward at the dryad, there was nothing unique looking about the attack as for all intents and purposes it was a simple punch.

The impact slammed into the dryad, and my hand was shoved into the interior of the monster. Before it could pull away from what I had done I swung my right arm upward, and then out away from the body. The entire front side of the dryad was torn apart and exposed, and the creature was sent falling to the ground lifelessly.

All three of the dryads had died, and it was a moment when I should have cried out in joy for my victory. Instead I screamed in pain as my mangled right hand, arm and shoulder went limp at my side. Blood seeped out from where the bones had jutted out from the flesh, and for the first time in a while I fell to my knees and shed tears simply due to severe pain.

It makes sense when thinking back on the attack, what I had done was something above my capabilities. Like my mother, Alise, my father and so many other hardened and powerful veterans I had drawn on my soul. Presence it was called, and using it you could boost your abilities significantly or even create an aura that was supernatural.

The first time I had ever done it was in that fight, I had played around with Presence before but it was something for a warrior beyond my current standing. While I almost crawled over to where the Shatterblade laid embedded inside a dead dryad I had plenty of time to think about the backlash. What would have happened if I did not have Taryn’s blessing? It was a chilling thought, and one I chose not to dwell on for more than two seconds.

Instead of reverting the Shatterblade into the dormant form I brought it once more into a spear form, before I struggled back up to my feet. Even my legs and feet hurt, most likely a fracture was in the left while a few of the muscles in both were torn. The spear became more of a crutch than a weapon while I tried to stagger through the town, heading in the direction of the fighting.

What I came across after five minutes of hobbled walking was the sight of Rudicus and two of the local legionnaires as they fought against one dryad, spears extended in front of them. The usage of the spears had been chosen based on my success at the north gate, versus the hard time they had at the south gate with swords and axes.

The legionnaires held a defensive position in the middle of a small plaza, a group of injured townsfolk placed behind them. Some were so severely injured that they would likely not walk for months, and a few of the townsfolk were even attempting first aid to help the ones who still bled from numerous wounds caused by the dryad assault.

Rudicus looked a bit funny as he tried valiantly to lash out at the dryad with his one good arm, while the other legionnaires tried to back him up with their own attacks. The dryad’s hollow eyes stared at the three defenders, the movements fast as it knocked aside the weak thrusts from the legionnaires. With each failed impalement the dryad stepped closer, an ever approaching doom that would overwhelm Rudicus easily.

The distance was great, and my overall strength was still weakened, but I had no choice as the death of General Rudicus would devastate the defenders. With all the power I could muster the spear in my left hand was sent flying at the dryad, at an angle that was within it’s blindspot. The weapon pierced into the left shoulder of the dryad, although it only buried in a few inches.

It was enough of an impact that the dryad turned and glared toward my direction, and then chortled out in that weird style of speaking they all utilized. The right arm of the dryad went toward the shoulder, and little tendrils emerged from the arm and pulled free the weapon. Once more it made that chortling noise, something that reminded me of laughter, and then the voice of the dryad became a high pitched scream.

The noise was such that even the citizens who stood behind the legionnaires held their hands to their ears, while Rudicus could only wince and suffer through it as he had no free hand with which to shield out the noise. The other two legionnaires with him temporarily dropped their weapons, demonstrating how poorly disciplined they were as they covered both of their ears with their hands.

“Liliana!” Rudicus bellowed out toward me, as he motioned for me to join up with him.

It was a nice idea, though it was one that would have to wait as I could barely walk without the spear. The spear which was now in the tentacles, tendrils or whatever of the dryad. It was a move that had seemed smart initially, but as I stared at the far off Shatterblade the stupidity of it sank home.

Of course it would have been a different matter if I had been close to the Shatterblade, but with enough distance between myself and the weapon and my ability to manipulate it was lost. It was the main reason I rarely utilized a throwing weapon with the Shatterblade, as I could potentially lose it.

A tingle ran down my spine, one that sent a bolt of fear into me and caused me to look around in a slight panic. My gaze swept over the area, yet all I could see was that single dryad as he grasped my Shatterblade. Even Rudicus seemed to have felt the tingle, his own eyes darted left and right rapidly, though he never gave up on paying attention to the nearby dryad. It was a familiar sensation, yet it was an implausible one and so I cast the thought aside instantly.

The sound of more dryads keening came to my ears and brought me back to reality, and also made me realize how horrible the situation was. Four more dryads slipped out from the darkness of the alleyways and side paths of the town, as they gathered nearby the one who had apparently called for them. Each one had a slightly distinctive look, though if I was pressed to describe those differences it would be impossible for me.

Each dryad began to walk forward at it’s own pace, one moved fast and was beside the spear-holding dryad in the blink of an eye while another lazily strolled forward. The sight of five dryads gathered was enough to make a few civilians cry out in horror, two wept openly and the legionnaires themselves seemed likely to have wet themselves. Rudicus had grown pale, and as he stared at the death in front he turned to look at me.

He did not speak aloud what he said, though it was easy enough to read his lips. “Save yourself,” he had told me, a statement I had never expected to see nor hear from him. While I watched the dryads continue their steady encroachment on the legionnaire position, Rudicus’ face continued to grow darker while he gripped the spear with his one good hand. He would die fighting, as a member of the Legion should.

One moment the dryads were on the verge of overrunning the legionnaires, and the next every single one of them went still. Rudicus himself dropped his spear, a look of horror spread over his face while he peered down at his feet. The legionnaires nearby him cried out in horror, and a few of the townsfolk near them also joined in on the screaming. It was an odd action which sent a hint of hope through my mind.

A luminescent flash of white swept through the lazily approaching dryad, the entire midsection of the body cleaved apart so that the creature could only collapse into two separate piles. One of the dryads turned slowly, as it shook free from the illusion and was met with a strong thrust of the sword to the face. Before it could fight back the sword had already slipped downward, cutting the entire dryad vertically into two chunks.

The glowing blade was the only thing visible as the wielder whirled, delivering a powerful swing of the weapon through the head of a third dryad, and then as the fourth valiantly swung in self-defense the arm was chopped free from the body. When it tried to step away the sword itself seemed to chase after it, carving open the chest area and dissecting nearly every organ of the abdomen in the matter of a second.

The dryad that held my spear tried to use it as a weapon against that glistening weapon, it swung it crudely like a club. The shaft of the spear was caught by an extended thin hand, and then the white blade impaled the dryad deeply in the stomach. With a quick jerk to the right the dryad was nearly cut in half like the first had been moments before, and then a powerful kick sent the dryad flying across the small plaza and into a building.

Her hair was still that odd combination of red and whites, a seemingly impossible blend that added an exotic look to her. The clothes she wore were tight and made of leather, with a light cloak held by a clasp at the neck. The coloring of the clothes were a dark brown, and looked weathered with a hint of moisture still visible on some parts. With a flourish of the sword she sent it back into the scabbard that housed it, and then turned to look at me with a light smile.

“I hope I’m not too late,” Alise said in a soft tone.

 

Chapter 12 :: Unexpected News

The arrival of Alise was a sight that made me want to start crying, the relief that she brought with her mere presence proved enough to make me slump to the ground. Rudicus could only look at this strange woman who had appeared like lightning, and then panic as he saw me fall to my knees on the ground. With a yell he started to run over toward me, even as he called for one of the other soldiers to bring a first aid kit.

Alise paused for a moment to pick up the Shatterblade, before she started to walk over to me with a quiet glide that made her elegance all the more obvious. She paid no attention to Rudicus, but instead offered the weapon back to me. “Yours, I believe,” she whispered out. She tilted her head ever so slightly as she looked at me. “If you were feeling better I would smack you.”

“What?” was all I could think of in response, while I gripped the Shatterblade tightly in my still functioning hand.

“Breaking yourself to defeat an opponent does nothing to help your friends and allies,” Alise informed me, while she stared pointedly at my ravaged arm. It was fairly obvious to her that I had pushed myself beyond my limits, and suffered largely due to that.

Rudicus stood over me, while one of the legionnaires joined him with a small bag. The legionnaire knelt down next to me and began to work on applying bandages, which brought slight hisses of pain from my mouth. “Who might you be, my lady?” Rudicus asked while he watched his subordinate work on patching me up.

Alise straightened up, and turned her head slowly to look at the general with a tiny smile on her face. “Lady Alise, I’m but a mere woman who runs an orphanage. I need to sweep the town to make sure all of the dryads are dead, so I shall leave Lily in your hands. I’m certain you’ll lay down your life to stop anything from harming her.”

Those final words held a certain degree of hostility that made Rudicus blanch, he had already witnessed the capabilities of Alise and knew she would rip him apart easily. He hastily nodded his head to her, even as he offered up a salute that he would normally not waste on a civilian. “Have no fears, Lady Alise, I shall most assuredly guard Liliana for you.”

One moment Alise was there and the next she was gone, vanished between the blink of an eye like a phantom. With her departure Rudicus relaxed visibly, his shoulders sagged and his back loosened as he slouched an inch. “Don’t let her scare you, she’s wonderful,” I informed Rudicus, while I watched the legionnaire work on my wounds. “She really does run an orphanage.”

“Why does someone that powerful…” Rudicus began to muse aloud, before he shook his head. “Nevermind. Can I assume that she will eliminate all the dryads still in town then?”

“And then some,” I replied. The bandages had been wrapped around my injuries, but the fact that I had broken bones meant a lot more than mere bandages would be required. With the assistance of Rudicus I managed to stand up, and then formed the Shatterblade into an actual crutch. “Help me walk, we need to go meet up with Nala.”

Rudicus lent me a shoulder, before he pointed one finger at the solider who had patched me up. “William, go find the other legionnaires and check in on their status. We need to find out what’s happened to everyone.”

It took far too long for the pair of us to get through the streets to the barracks, which were chaotic as civilians who were injured rested outside. Legionnaires had pulled chairs, benches and beds from the various houses and even the barrack itself and laid them out in front of the building, while Nala went from person to person helping each.

The two assistants that she continually yelled at worked furiously to keep up with her pace, they were often left to handle the easiest cases while Nala took the life threatening issues on personally. The amount of injured was far lower than what one might have expected, though that was in no small part thanks to the fact that most of the legionnaires themselves were hurt.

The two legionnaires who I had seen get tossed into the walls and knocked out were present, each one had bandages wrapped about their heads and still had a somewhat unsteady look. They had bruises, scratches and one even had a broken nose. To see that they had both survived the dryads assault made me happy, though that happiness dropped when I saw the bodies covered in sheets lain out on the ground.

At least six people had died during the attack of the dryads, though who they were specifically I could not tell due to the sheets that were placed on them. Nobody looked at the corpses, for the survivors it was more important to recover than to wallow in the misery of the loss. While I stared at the bodies the thought that one might be Jesson or Eran came to me, though I hoped that was not the case.

“Nala!” Rudicus called out, as he helped me over to an open bench. It was a hard wood bench with no cushions, but it was better than the dirty ground and so I rested on it.

Nala looked up and saw Rudicus, but she shook her head before she continued working. Even I could tell why she did that, she was in the middle of sewing up someone who had a large cut that ran up their side and was continually bleeding. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” I told Rudicus while I rested on the bench.

General Rudicus nodded his head at me, though his face was as emotionless as he could pull off. It was always amusing to see that emulation of Sciroco, especially since he very rarely bothered acting stiff and emotionless when we were alone. Why Sciroco had started to act like that was one of those mysteries that I had never figured out, nor held any interest in solving.

While I waited for Nala to get to me William the legionnaire arrived and reported to Rudicus, though they talked in hushed tones at a distance from both myself and the other patients. Through the whole conversation Rudicus kept up his poker face and didn’t let any sort of reaction slip, which meant to me that nothing truly horrifying was reported.

The tingle that raced down my back was what warned me, and so when there was a presence seated on the bench next to me I didn’t scream in surprise. Alise had arrived with that ease of a ghost, and settled on the bench all in a flash. “I can’t find any more,” she told me, while she watched Rudicus and William talk.

It was not much that was said, yet it was enough to bring a smile to my face. “Thank god,” I breathed out in relief.

“I’m going to need to step outside of the town and check the area nearby, and any nearby towns as well,” Alise said. “Once I’m certain all the dryads are exterminated I’ll need to head back to the orphanage.”

“You don’t want to stay and talk to anyone?” I asked her.

“Waste of time. Right now only Skara and the kids are defending the orphanage,” Alise told me, before she sighed quietly.

“Where’s Shorty?”

“I sent him to the local garrison at Shiadone,” Alise said, before she stood up from the bench. “He should be on his way soon.”

Rudicus had walked over to join us while I had been distracted, he held a clipboard in one hand which had been handed to him by someone previously. “Lady Alise, as a general of the Legion I offer our thanks for your timely assistance,” he told her in a stiff tone, while he gave a slight bow.

Alise offered a tiny smile to him, before she gave a nod of her head. “Think nothing of it,” she replied. “I’m sorry but I need to leave. A company of legionnaires should be reaching the area soon and I’ll point them to this town.”

“That seems oddly coincidental,” Rudicus commented.

“Contingencies are a useful sort of thing to have,” Alise told him, before she lifted up a hand and gave a slight wave toward me. “Make sure you go see your parents before you come back to the orphanage. I’d rather not have your mother throwing a fit.”

Before I could even offer a reply she had already vanished, which left Rudicus looking altogether unhappy. “Something the matter?” I asked of him, with an impish little grin on my face.

Rudicus merely glared at me, before he turned away and walked back toward Nala. The medic of his company was very much a busy woman, as she continued to work on numerous bleeding patients who all needed her immediate attention. Without even asking Rudicus put down the clipboard and started to help her, though he seemed to be only as efficient as the other legionnaires who were present.

While everyone kept on working I settled down on the bench, lifting my legs up and letting them rest on the full length of it. The wood was hard, very uncomfortable to the point of near distraction, and yet I still managed to slowly fall asleep. My final thoughts before the darkness caused by fatigue swept over me was how I wanted to go to the orphanage instead of my own home.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The town of Mastille would never be the same again, the loss of numerous families caused such anguish for many of the citizens that it would be weeks before they recovered. As was normal the bodies were burned, including those of the legionnaires who had perished during the assault. No body would be buried for fear of the Plague being attracted, something which Rudicus hammered home was very possible given their recent activity.

Pyre after pyre were erected, then a moment later the air was filled with a stench which quickly soured the appetite of anyone nearby. Some of the people stood and watched as the corpses were burned, and the surviving legionnaires themselves saluted the pyres upon which their companions rested.

It was a pity that we would never find the corpses of those who had gone missing, whatever the dryads had done with the bodies would remain a mystery that I was all too happy not to solve. Later that night, and the subsequent nights I never encountered Taryn in any of my dreams while I slept almost permanently in hopes of recovering faster.

The fourth day after Alise had arrived like a hurricane and saved us from imminent death the legionnaires led by Shorty arrived, each of the men treated him with far more respect than I would have expected. When I went to speak with my little friend he shook his head, Shorty was far too busy ordering the legionnaires around like a general.

Tiltain had gone missing during the dryad assault, whether he had been abducted or devoured or merely deserted was unknown. Rudicus dispatched an order for his arrest upon discovery, and revoked all of the rights that Tiltain would have had as a member of the Legion. It would be a bad day for the coward if he still survived, something which none of us cared to have happen.

A day after Shorty arrived with the reinforcements Rudicus ordered me into a carriage, and then joined me. “No arguments, you’re going home,” Rudicus told me straight out when I asked him what was going on.

“What about Shorty?” I asked, as I looked out of the carriage at my little and yet old friend who continued to bark orders at the legionnaires.

“Lady Alise requested him to make certain the town was in working order before he was allowed to return,” Rudicus explained, while he knocked on the interior wall of the carriage. A moment later the carriage started to roll along the road, while I continued to watch Shorty as long as possible.

So with minimal warning and no hope of talking with Shorty I was forced onto the road again, though at least I road in luxury. It was a finely designed carriage with a comfortable interior and plenty of leg room. Rudicus left me alone during the trip, he seemed far too busy with reading and writing documents to spend time talking to me.

Have you ever felt to yourself that you’re bored? Imagine that sensation stretched over fourteen days and you’ll get a glimpse of how I felt during the two weeks we spent riding toward the north. It seemed as though I was doomed to forever ride in carriages which took far too long to reach their destination. Due to the fact that Rudicus had no urge to talk to me I spent as much of the ride asleep, often only waking up long enough to take something to help ease the pain that rippled through my body with every bump.

Scintallia had not changed in the short time I had been gone, and when the carriage paused in front of my home I fought the urge to shove Rudicus out and order the driver to keep going. Alise had been quite right in that if I didn’t come back home to check in with my mother there would be complications, and those would most likely include her thrashing me for a good while even if I was still injured.

“Come on,” I almost growled to Rudicus as I clambered out of the carriage, still relying on the Shatterblade to create a crutch. The muscles in my legs had for the most part healed, but the fracture in my left leg was still not finished. Given the rate it was progressing at I had at least another week, if not two, before walking freely would be possible.

Before Rudicus or I could even reach the mansion, the twin doors flung open wide and fast enough to scare the twin butlers who stood outside. Diana adorned with her regular maid outfit, and her little tiara that rested on her head, darted over to us with a cry of happiness. She flung her arms roughly around me, which forced a hiss of pain to escape from my mouth.

With a cry of shock she stepped back, one hand lifted to her mouth. “I’m so sorry Lady Liliana, I didn’t realize you were injured that badly!” she declared, a look of fear flashed over her face.

“It’s alright Diana,” I comforted her. “I’m happy to see you too. I’m going to my room to rest for a bit, please inform my mother that I’ll meet with her at dinner.”

Diana gave a curtsy, before she turned away and almost ran back to the mansion. She paused for a moment to speak briefly with one of the twins who stood at the mansion entrance, and then vanished into the interior without a further word. “Very energetic,” Rudics commented from my side.

We walked to the door, although the one guard held up a hand toward Rudicus and pulled him to the side for a moment. They spoke in hushed tones, though about what I was not certain, before Rudicus was allowed to join me in the foyer of the mansion. When he came in he had a look that stated quite clearly how unhappy he was over what had been said to him.

“What did they say?” I asked of him, before I started to walk toward the door which would lead to my room.

“Nothing you need to know,” Rudicus bluntly stated. He looked almost embarrassed, which only increased my curiosity. “I shall take my leave for now. Until later, Lady Liliana.”

Lady? I mouthed, before I shook my head and walked away. Why he had opted to be a bit more formal at that moment held no importance to me, and instead I felt the distinct urge to go to my room. A few moments later I found myself there, and lowered myself onto the bed with as little grace as was humanly possible. The soft cushions and the fine blankets caught my body as though I had landed in a cloud, and shortly thereafter sleep once more gripped me.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

If not for Diana I would have been late for the dinner, and even then I chose not to wear a formal outfit. It was rude of me, but the idea of struggling into a tight dress and heels did not interest me in the slightest given how my body still ached.

The dining area was the same as always, with the beautiful plates lain out ornamentally on the table. Diana had taken it upon herself to be my main assistant, forgoing her own normal duties in exchange for watching over me. When I seated myself at the table she was there to make certain I had no issues, and even offered to help feed me if I felt the need.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her when she asked me that, before I waved her off with one hand. I was not an invalid and the fact that she hovered around like I was made me annoyed to the point of near violence.

My mother and father entered together, my father adorned in battle armor which he favored whenever the Empire requested his aid with the Legion. My mother on the other hand wore a loose dress that hugged at her hips and only softly accentuated her chest. When she settled down into her chair my father held it out for her, something I had never seen him do, and then he in turn took his regular spot at the head of the table.

Vargos was already present, he had entered in advance of my mother and most likely cleared it to be safe. Head as well as personal butler and even an accountant when it called for it, Vargos was also the bodyguard of my mother and more than an equal for most people in the Empire. While he could not handle a candle to my own father and mother I was certain that a fight between the two of us would be very close.

Rudicus entered last, he was followed closely by a maid who seemed far too interested in watching him like a hawk. He wore his armor like it was common nature to wear it to a dinner, and settled loudly into his seat across the table from myself and Esmeralda.

The food that was served did little to interest me, it was for the most part common salad mixed with light slices of chicken. The chef had added a slight sauce to it that was for the most part oil, with a strong and almost bitter taste. My mother seemed to thoroughly enjoy it while Rudicus had a look of disgust for a moment. He did, however, eat it all without complaint.

“Did you have fun on your outing?” my mother asked, as the silence broke so suddenly I thought I heard the sound of glass shattering. She smiled toward me, though there was no move to pat my shoulder nor hug me.

“About as fun as the time you caught me sneaking out of legionnaire training when I was seven,” I told her. A slight shudder ran through my body at that memory, which caused Rudicus to raise an eyebrow quizzically.

“I’ve read the reports that General Rudicus filed, it appears you were integral to the survival of his soldiers,” Esmeralda said, as she wiggled a single finger toward Vargos.

The head butler stepped toward her, and from behind his back he offered a piece of parchment. Mother held the parchment with one free hand while she pushed away her empty plate, which was promptly taken by a maid who seemed to appear like magic. “By the way, General Rudicus were you quite serious with this request?”

Rudicus stiffened at that inquiry, before he placed his fork down gently and looked to Esmeralda with a serious expression. “I believe it would be beneficial to both our families,” Rudicus responded. “As you know my father holds a position of power within the Guild, and many of my relatives are placed highly within the Legion.”

“What’s going on?” I wondered aloud, while Vargos remained still behind my mother. He spared a quick glance at me, which was followed with a wink, before he returned his gaze to Rudicus.

Mother handed over the parchment to me, although I did not need to bother with reading it as she explained aloud what was happening. “General Rudicus has sent me an official declaration of intent to marry you. He wishes for you to be his betrothed, and is willing to offer quite a fine bride price.”

Before I could even stand up Vargos already had a hand on my shoulder, one that held me down with such strength it startled me. My previous belief that I could be his equal was dashed in the matter of a moment, although I would not place him higher than Taryn in overall capacity. The surprise caused by Vargos was enough that I could not even form words with which to speak out against this proposed marriage.

When the words came for a moment I was confused as to where they originated, before the familiarity of the voice made me look to my father. “She will not be marrying you, General Rudicus.”

It was a very blunt and straight forward way of turning him down, and one that I had not anticipated given how little my father seemed to care for me. If anything having someone with Rudicus’ position of power and wealth as my husband should have made Vandross happy.

Rudicus accepted this declaration with a bit of grace, although the disappointment he felt was very visible on his face. “Might I ask as to why?” he managed to say after a few moments of deep thought.

Vargos loosened his hold on my shoulder as he stepped back to my mother’s side, though he gave me another wink of assurance. The various maids and butlers who stood in the background of the room all seemed to have known this was coming, as none seemed disturbed in the slightest by the declaration of intent.

“That’s none of your business!” I told Rudicus with no hint of manners. The fact that he had gone around me to try and use my parents to acquire a marriage had flared up a good deal of anger in me. I had felt he was better than that, a belief which he had promptly ruined with his backroom politics.

It was only for a second but I could have sworn that I saw a smile from my father, though he returned to his silent eating once more. Out of everyone present he was the slowest of all the eaters, taking his time as though each bite was important to him and required his fullest attention. Even I had completed eating before him, and I used my left hand to eat which was something I was unaccustomed to doing.

When we all finally finished eating my father pushed his plate away, and then gave a slight wave of his hand toward Vargos. The butler nodded his head and cleared his throat loud enough to draw the attention of everyone, before he bowed and offered a hand toward the seated Esmeralda.

Mother took his hand and stood up, before she gently placed her other hand on her stomach. The smile on her face made the beauty that she held all the more radiant, while she looked at all those in the room with happiness sparkling in her eyes. “I have a bit of good news to tell you all,” she said, before she looked to my father. “Vandross and I are going to have another child.”

The news hit all of us with the same level of shock that a dragon landing in the middle of your backyard would generate. Most of the maids and butlers paled visibly, while a few clapped their hands happily. Diana who had stood by me and worried so much took the news as I would have expected of her.

She turned and ran for the door while screaming in horror.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

One might think that the news of pregnancy was great, but given how my mother had been while she carried me it was expected. Everybody knows that a pregnant woman can be prone to bouts of unhappiness, sometimes go so far as to be hard to deal with. My mother in turn has the ability to break bones with a flick of a finger, destroy buildings with a well placed punch and otherwise generate nightmares with ease.

Diana, nor any of the other veteran members of the staff, would talk to me about my mother while she held me within her womb. Vargos himself said that if not for his training he would have died numerous times, and that if it wasn’t for his great respect for Esmeralda he would’ve ran away only a few months into the pregnancy.

While I rested in my bed the fact that I would have a sibling in less than a year continued to dance in my head. If it was a brother it would most likely make my father happier beyond anything, but if it was a sister would he treat her the same way? Of course I would be there to help her get through any of the aggravation caused by father, but it would be impossible to protect her from everything.

Also the fact that they were about to have a child was one that shocked me, I had figured that mother had become incapable of having another given how none had appeared in the lengthy time between her recent pregnancy and my birth. It was even something I had commented on to my father, something which he had made me regret instantly.

I stretched on the bed, and then sighed so loudly that if not for the soundproofed walls one of the maids or butlers would’ve heard it. There was no use in dwelling on spilt milk, as Alise would most likely have told me. In the end I would need to accept whoever my new sibling was with as much happiness as possible, and help my parents so that they did not blunder into the same mistakes they had made with me.

The loud knock at my door caused me to almost jump from the bed, a movement that caused a wince due to the pain. The knock came once more, with enough force that the door itself seemed likely to snap in half, and then there was silence. “I’m coming!” I called out, even though there was a good chance that the person on the other side would not have heard what I said.

By the time I managed to limp my way to the door I half-expected the knocker to have walked away, so when I opened the door my shock at the person in front of me was warranted. The fact that it was my father who stood in front of me only compounded the degree of shock I felt, indeed it seemed like the day could not stop throwing shocks at me.

“Evening,” he told me, though he did not say anything further.

“Um…evening, father,” I responded, my voice meek enough that it was obvious I was both shocked and perhaps scared to see him in front of me. There was not a single time in my entire life I had ever seen him at the door to my room, if either of my parents wished to speak with me I always had to go to them. “Can I help you?”

For a while he stared at me, and then he slowly lifted up his right hand and gently placed it on my head. To call it gentle is perhaps wrong, the way it looked was most definitely a gentle and soft approach of the hand with no haste nor strength behind it. However when he placed his hand on my head the power he generated from it was enough to make me sag down half an inch, and even my neck muscles screamed out in protest at the force applied to them.

“You’ve done a good job,” he simply told me, as he rubbed my head for a few seconds and then lifted it away. The powerful hand returned to his side, while he looked at me in silence again, and then nodded his head. “Don’t worry about Rudicus.”

How many words had I heard my father speak in the totality of my life? If you discounted the words he had spoken during combat, as he barked out orders to save peoples lives, it would take me perhaps two or three minutes to recount the amount. The whole series of events made me wonder if his mind had been broken due to too many years of fighting the Plague. “Are you okay?” I finally asked of him, worried that something was horribly wrong.

The smile Vandross Rose directed at me would have melted a glacier, it was a soft and extremely warm view to witness. In all the years my mother had been married to him I had never understood why, and yet with that singular smile the mystery began to unravel. “I’m fine, go to bed, Liliana,” he told me before he turned and walked down the hallway.

It was an abrupt departure, yet it was perhaps the most normal part of the entire exchange we had that night. Out of my entire life it would prove to be one of the two times my father had demonstrated his feelings toward me openly, and the other would not come until two years later. Even as he walked away I could only stare in confusion, and then slowly close the door.

That night was the first time I went to bed and did not think about how I was a failure to my father, in truth it would be the first in many nights when I fell asleep with a smile on my face. While the emotional wounds I had gained during my youth would forever mark my heart, my father had unknowingly helped in alleviating some of the pain.

It would also be the first time I ever fell asleep and felt a tugging at my soul, a whisper in my ear. Even though I was so far away I could hear the words in my ear clearly, and before I fully fell asleep I responded.

“Good night, Taryn.”

 

Chapter 13 :: Exposure Of The Soul

After the easy sleep I spent an average day wandering the house, meeting the new servants who had been acquired by my parents during my absence. A few were happy enough to be there, and even those who did not care for being slaves were gracious because of the leniency they were granted. If they so wished it they could take time off from work and head home, and most would do so while taking along their earned wages for the rest of their family.

Days began to slip by with a speed that almost alarmed me, I had become so relaxed in the house that had often grated on my nerves that soon enough a few weeks had slipped past me. During it all my recovery continued, and while I continued to limp and rely on a crutch everything else had healed.

General Rudicus had not waited long in leaving my house, he had caught on quickly that his underhanded attempt at acquiring a bride did not please the servants. Many of those who spent their time opening doors would often pretend he was not there, and a few of the maids managed to demonstrate their displeasure by accidentally ruining his clothing when they washed them.

So after two and a half weeks since the night Rudicus tried to gain my hand in marriage by appealing to my father, I began to once more develop the urge to leave. I did not despise the house so much that I needed to run away, if anything Diana managed to make me smile on a daily basis. Still it was time for me to leave, which I decided to tell my mother. She took the news without a single blink of the eye, though she did order me to follow her into another room.

It was a room large enough to hold a central table, a few chairs and a sofa against one of the walls. Commonly used by the servants of the house, Esmeralda and myself were seated at the table, while Diana hovered nearby mother with a worried expression on her face. Every so often she would move in closer, though with a tremble in her hands, before speaking a few words of encouragement.

Two hours passed while all three of us had been in the common room, while Diana struggled desperately to teach mother the basics of knitting. With enough yarn to create nearly anything imaginable she had so far failed to produce anything of use. She was the wife of the legendary Vandross, she had the ability to break people in half and lay siege to an entire army, yet she was incompetent at handicrafts.

What had come as a shock to the both of them was how capable I already was at knitting, a skill that I had gained thanks to the assistance of Maria. The girl who had grown on a farm learned all of the basics of knitting, sewing and cooking from her mother prior to the slaver attack. Whenever I had free time and wanted to see her she’d willingly teach me whatever I wanted.

“No, Lady Esmeralda, you used the wrong stitch again,” Diana lightly told her, as she stepped in close and hesitatingly pointed at the blanket mother was working on.

Mother’s hands froze as she stared at the mistake, before her brow furrowed and she let out a small sigh. She offered it up toward Diana who once more had to help her unknit the offending stitch. It took little time and mother once again began to tackle the difficulty that was knitting, even while I worked steadily at my own project.

It was meant to be a scarf, though it was not for anybody in particular. When mother had started her own attempt at creating a blanket I realized that I lacked anything to do, and so had begun to knit while Diana began her lesson. My progress was not fast, as I lacked the confidence and technique to produce anything quickly, and so the scarf had barely any rows done even hours into it.

While mother had proven quite incompetent at knitting she did not let it dissuade her, she remained seated in a rigid and upright position. Her hands moved without fear, even as she made one error after another. Even as she worked at the blanket she managed to spare a few words for me, as she probed me for information. “Do you truly plan to depart tomorrow?”

It was a question that made my own knitting pause, while I gazed toward mother even as a small smile began to form. “Yes, I’ve been gone too long,” I responded, before I began to work once more.

“You’re still hurt though!” Diana chimed in, as she turned in my direction.

My pace at the knitting dropped significantly while I attempted to wrestle with speaking alongside the task. “I’m fine Diana, I want to check in on the kids at the orphanage,” I told her, before I smiled toward the head maid to reassure her.

Diana stared at me with slightly widened eyes, she would not relax anytime soon based on how often she worried about me. Like an older sister or aunt who always wanted to support you, Diana had helped to fill the void that would often occur whenever mother left on a mission. To so readily give up on the habit of worrying would prove impossible for her.

A slight murmur to the left made me turn my head, my eyes focused away from my personal project and to a spot of thin air. For a while I merely stared off into space, head tilted to the side while I listened to a ripple of noise that was impossible to decipher. Time began to hold no meaning while my mind began to blank out, and then the world rushed back as Diana touched my right shoulder gently. “Liliana, are you okay?” she asked in a louder tone of voice than normal even as my head turned about to face her in surprise.

With a certain degree of difficulty I wrestled a smile onto my face, before I turned my gaze back to the scarf. At the pace I was going it would be completed in a few months, perhaps longer if I was distracted by any major events. “I’m fine, Diana, and you know you can call me Lily,” I reminded her.

A small little grin flashed onto her face, before my mother cleared her throat. “If you are so adamant on departing for the orphanage tomorrow I shall not stand in your way,” mother said with an even tone of voice. “Though you had best plan to return in eight months.”

“Do you really think I’d miss the birth?” I asked of her, before I chuckled lightly. While the thought of being around an irate mother did not please me the fact that I would have a new brother or sister made up for it. I could only hope that none of the servants died during my absence.

“I would hope not,” my mother honestly replied, before she put her knitting down and looked to me with a serious expression. “When you do come back your father has a favor he would like you to do for him.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing much,” mother responded, before she picked up her blanket and returned to knitting even as she spoke. “Merely bring Allie’s son along.”

The scarf that I had been working on was completely forgotten at that, as I half-rose from the chair. Even Diana paused in her attempt to guide my mother in her knitting, to only stare with a slightly opened mouth at Esmeralda. “Mother! Why would father want me to do that?” I almost demanded of her.

“Oh? Why such an outcry?” mother asked in return, though she did not take her eyes from the blanket she worked so carefully at. “He only wants to talk with the son of an old friend.”

Slowly I settled back into the chair, though it was obvious that I was not happy from my face. “I’m sure that’s all he wants,” I muttered unhappily, before once more I returned to knitting.

For a while after that we sat there in silence, while Diana looked from my mother to me more than once. Once the tension that my mother had created began to drop off Diana once more started to offer her tips and help, though she kept her distance as often as possible. It was a tactic that most of the servants had adopted, avoiding being within striking distance of my mother.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The next morning my mother and I stood outside of the mansion, while a carriage rested nearby. There were a few men who rode their own horses, strong looking steeds of the purest white and pedigree. Each of the soldiers was a member of the Legion, garbed in the magic tools that are the legionnaire armor.

“Why are you sending them along with me?” I asked mother, even as I rested my face in my right hand. “I can handle myself, I’m not an invalid.”

Mother sniffed at that comment, her face half-turned away from me. “If you could take care of yourself you wouldn’t be as beat up as you are now,” she pointed out, before she brandished an envelope at me. “Be a dear and take this, it is for Allie.”

“A love letter for your old friend?” I teased my mother, even while I accepted the letter. It went into the small bag which I planned to take with me, a few pieces of clothing to help shake up the monotony of baggy pants and baggy shirts all day long.

“Don’t be silly, Liliana,” mother chided me before she turned and started to walk back to the mansions main door. She paused after a few steps and cast a look back at me, “I hope you will not forget to visit from time to time?”

It was impossible not to smile at her, before I gave a small bow. “Of course, mother. Take care and don’t kill anyone!”

“Vargos will stop me before I can,” mother assured me, even as she walked into the mansion and the doors closed behind her.

With her departure I climbed into the carriage, before resting and quickly finding that I had little to do. While I chose to knit for the duration of the trip there were moments when even that wore at my mind, and so I returned to testing the limits of the Shatterblade. Previous experiments had focused on new types of weapons, but it was armor and tools that I began to test while I traveled to Alise’s orphanage.

By the time we arrived at Shiadone I had exhausted any practical applications of the Shatterblade and tried to figure out new types of tools or pieces of equipment. It would prove a futile effort on my part as I lacked the mental flexibility to create inventions from scratch, and so I had attempted to take on the task of creating a bow with the Shatterblade once more.

When the carriage passed out of Shiadone and we entered into the forest I gave up on the Shatterblade, my attention turned instead to the trees nearby. My gaze instinctively sought out the hidden children who helped to guard the orphanage, noting the telltale signs of their passing which they used to communicate with one another. It was not long into the forest before I noticed a shadow perched high atop a tree that blended in near perfectly with the foliage of the tree.

The carriage passed unmolested through the forest and slowed down prior to entering the tunnel nearby the orphanage. As it passed out of the defensive structure crafted by Alise the sunlight streamed down and illuminated the surrounding glade, with the cottage centered as always in the middle of it all. No children could be seen, though Alise did stand nearby the door to her home while she watched the carriage.

The presence of the legionnaires was not one that drew any form of happiness from Alise, the fact that armed men had rode their horses into the orphanage grounds was similar to a declaration of war. When they pulled their steeds to a stop and did not dismount Alise visibly relaxed, though it was doubtful she ever fully truly let her guard down.

When the carriage finally came to a stop I wasted no time in opening the door and leaping out, throwing the bag in advance. I bounded out of the carriage with enough pent up energy to destroy a horde of Plague, and waved toward the foremost legionnaires. “You can head home! Thanks for the escort!” I yelled out to not only the driver but also the Legion members.

The legionnaires saluted me, before they reined their horses back toward the wooden tunnel. The carriage lurched along after them, while the driver called out for me to take care even as he waved in parting. While we had not talked during the journey he was one of many servants I had met numerous times back at my parents home. While the legionnaires and the carriage departed I paused to scoop up my bag and toss it over my shoulder, before I turned toward Alise and bowed in greeting.

The cacophony that occurred then nearly threw me to the ground, as the children burst out of hiding and cried their hellos to me. Many of the children were so young that they struggled merely to speak up loud enough to be heard over the oldest of them all, who were far too enthused with my arrival. Like a tidal wave they poured out of their hiding places, even as the cottage door opened and Maria along with Phil appeared.

The numerous arms and hands that clung to me were far too many to count, and instead I merely laughed and reveled in the attention, while I patted the heads of many kids and said hello to as many I could. It was a tough task, but one that I did not have a qualm with since even I had grown saddened by my absence from the orphanage.

An ocean of children and teenagers began to part as Alise walked forward, everyone knew to clear room for her and hastened to not disrupt her steps out of respect. When she was close enough to touch Alise gave a slight nod of her head, before she spoke in that quiet voice of hers. In truth it made little sense that I could hear what she said, over the buzz of excitement that the throng of children produced. “Welcome back, were your parents in good health?”

“Yes!” I almost cried out, before I fished through the bag for the letter. With far too much energy I thrust the envelope at Alise, before I spoke once more. “My mother is pregnant again!”

I had never known the joy that could come from a pregnant mother, for the most part people hear about the fact that someone is going to have a child and they merely nod their head and say congratulations. Yet as soon as I knew she was expecting the urge to tell everyone boiled up in me, and for the first time I had managed to find someone I could speak to about the subject.

Alise’s eyes widened in surprise at that statement, before a small smile curled her lips. She accepted the envelope, though she did not open it in front of myself and the others. “That’s wonderful, dear, now make sure you clean up before dinner,” she reminded me before turning away and walking gracefully back to her cottage.

As Alise stepped out of the gathering of children once more the bodies surged toward me, the youngest of the kids far more eager to hug me and say their greeting than the eldest. From my spot I could only wave toward the teenagers who stood guard on the walls, before the mass of bodies managed to topple me and send me to the ground even as laughter erupted from my mouth.

It was good to be home.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Later that evening we feasted on venison that had been acquired thanks to the hunters of the orphanage, along with some fresh vegetables pulled out of the gardens near the back of the orphanage. The drinks had been a mixture of juices and water for the children, while the handful of adults were allowed to try the wine.

Skara was there and made certain that none of the others became too drunk, he had taken on the role of a parental figure so well that it startled me. While he still kept up that goofy grin of his and friendly attitude, he had lost a certain degree of the wild nature that had made him almost childlike during our journey together.

The absence of Shorty was one that saddened me, I had hoped to hug the miserable old man and thank him for all of his hard work. Alise informed me that he had yet to return, he would be busy as he helped to reconstruct and make certain the Legion was ready for any more dryad attacks. She danced around the question of why the legionnaires had bowed so readily to his commands, as well as why she had chosen him for the task in the first place.

After the grand feast in celebration of my return I helped to put many of the kids to bed, before Alise called me to her cottage. Even though my day had felt quite long as I had played with the children for so long, I still had enough energy left over that I nearly skipped my way from the dormitory to the cottage. Knocking on the door drew a command to enter from Alise, and without hesitation I opened the door and stepped inside.

Upon entrance into the cottage everyone was greeted with a wide and tall room, with a square table set off to the left side. Three chairs were placed around the table, one of which Alise had seated herself in. A rug sprawled across the wooden floor in a rectangle that failed to cover all of the interior, while across from the door a fireplace merrily burned away at logs placed inside the flames.

Upon the wall rested the head of a monster that I couldn’t even recognize, stuffed and preserved for Alise. While I closed the door behind me I noticed a tapestry that was placed above the doorway, one that showed a story about a girl who was found by a man in white. My eyes continued to scan the interior of the cottage and I noted a pile of weapons gathered on a side table in the corner. To the right of the entrance the door to another part of the cottage could be seen, closed, with a two-handed sword rested outside of it.

Alise beckoned toward me to take a seat, while she remained in her chair. The combination of white and red hair fell down onto a thin scarlet nightgown, while a pair of dark red slippers covered her feet and helped to ward off the chill of the night. She rested both elbows on the table with one hand placed against her cheek, even as the other hand gripped mothers envelope.

By the time I had seated she had not spoken a word, and so I cleared my throat and spoke first. “Alise, why did you ask me to come here?”

Alise tapped the envelope against the wooden table, before she turned her gaze toward my face. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I said hesitatingly, I had finished recuperating on the carriage ride to the orphanage. If not for that the child avalanche probably would’ve rebroken my bones, or at the least reminded me of how sore I had been.

“Anything odd happening?” Alise inquired, while she studied my face for any reactions.

The questions had started to bother me, but I accepted it as necessary. Alise was not one who did something strange for no reason, she always held a purpose to her actions. “Nothing that I can think of?” I half-asked in return, not sure where the conversation was headed.

“You wanted to know about Shorty, and it almost seemed like you were checking up on every child here,” Alise began, before she paused and then placed the envelope flat against the table. “Why don’t you wonder about Taryn?”

Out of all the questions she could pose it was the one I had not expected in the slightest, for the very reason that I didn’t know the answer. For a moment I sat there stunned, before I looked toward the fireplace and stared into the flames as though they might hold the answer. “I…don’t know?” I finally admitted, before I slouched a little in the chair.

“When you fought the dryads you did something dangerous, you used your Presence,” Alise told me in a hushed tone, soft and slow. “There is a reason why the Legion does not seek out and utilize every single person who can hope to wield Presence.”

I merely sat there, the fact that her question had let me befuddled was obvious. Even as she spoke her words sank in but didn’t really matter, instead my brain worked at discovering the answer to her previous inquiry.

Alise slammed her fist down on the table, though she held back her true strength. It was with enough force that I nearly jumped out of my own skin, my eyes widened while I looked at her in confusion. “Presence is using your very soul as a weapon, you bare yourself to the world and the world marks you forever, if you use it too much, too often, it permanently warps you,” Alise told me. “The more you use it the more you change. For some people there is almost no change, but for others there is a vast change.”

“But father and mother use it all the time!” I almost cried out, I had not heard about this aspect of Presence whatsoever when others had told me about it in the past.

“Haven’t you noticed how your father touches nobody?” Alise asked of me, before she tapped her one finger lightly against the table a few times. “His side effect is raw strength, the power he would normally only utilize while draped in his own soul no longer can be put away. I’ve seen him break people in half simply by patting them on the shoulder.”

It was information which hit me hard, and also started to answer many questions of the past. The fact that we had so many people who held open doors, how my father never touched me during my childhood and constantly avoided me. The way that mother and he seemed to rarely touch one another even though they loved one another so much. “What about mother?” I asked, though it was a question that scared me.

“Esmeralda lost the ability to feel temperatures,” Alise replied, though she did not expand upon it.

“What about you?”

The response from Alise to that question was to look away from me, a hint of distaste crossed her face. Whatever it was that she thought in that moment was not about to be shared with me, as she cleared her throat and steered the conversation away from herself. “I’m not important, you are. Your mother already noticed something off about you. A few times over the past few weeks you’ve been distracted, according to her letter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I honestly responded.

“Close your eyes, Lily,” she ordered me. “Relax, breath in deep. Let your mind wander.”

I was not about to argue with someone who could tear me apart with her pinky finger, and so I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Each muscle of my body was individually flexed, and then relaxed, so as to fully let my body loosen up and release any tension. No longer did I focus on the thoughts of the day, the memories of everything and instead let emptiness fill my mind.

The scent of leaves and flowers, the sound as boots crushed down on leaves with each step. Ahead in the distance a light could be seen through the trees that surrounded, along with a wooden wall that ran in both directions. The presence of a few of the night watch who kept their eyes out for intruders could be felt, rather than seen.

“There are two reasons why you wouldn’t ask me about Taryn,” Alise told me. “The first reason would be that your side effect is the removal of him from your mind, memories, perhaps even heart.”

She did not need to tell me about the second, as I opened my eyes. “Thank you,” I told her before I stood up from the table and politely pushed the chair back in. I paused for a moment to look toward the bedroom door, a small smile passed over my face, before I opened the main door of the cottage and walked outside.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The outside air was fresh and cool, wrapped in a wool cloak I sat on top of the tunnel and stared out into the forest. Saris had paused to hand me a mug of warm tea, before she walked away without asking me about my presence on the wall. Out of the numerous guards who watched over the orphanage she was my favorite, a quiet girl who worked hard to being the best she could be. Shorty had already told me that Saris would probably make for a good Guild member in the near future, though a part of me didn’t want to see her leave the orphanage.

A small burst of wind swept over the forest and threw the leaves up in a cloud of disarray, while my long hair flew out behind me. The ponytail had been released, it was better for the hair to not be left in a ponytail when I went to bed after all. My free hand lifted up to ward off some of the leaves from striking my eyes, while I continued to gaze into the darkness ahead.

From the shadows the sound of movement came, and then a figure stepped out into the open before the tunnel. It was a man who wore dark clothes and had a hood up to hide away his face, though I already knew that beneath the hood rested silver hair and green eyes. At his waist was a small coin purse, which I knew without asking held four coins he had picked up from a job in town.

Taryn tilted his head upward, before he reached up and pulled away the hood and let it fall. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, before he leapt up from the floor of the forest to the top of the tunnel with as much effort as sitting in a chair might require.

I stood up, though it proved harder than I expected given the mug of hot tea in hand. With one hand I gripped my cloak closed to ward off the cold, and with the other I extended the drink toward Taryn. He took it, though a puzzled look was clearly on his face as he accepted it from me.

“Welcome home,” I told him.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Herein ends Volume 2 of A Dance of Poison and Curses