The storm of energy unleashed by the Stone Warriors ended as abruptly as it began. As the smoke and debris it kicked up began to clear though, the light glowing from their target didn’t.

The Stone Warriors had directed their attacks at Iana but, where she stood, a pair of crossed wings were visible, shining with brilliant yellow light.

Alari rose a moment later, unfurling her wings as she did so that Iana could breath freely.

“The Council would be wise not to try our patience in that manner,” Alari said.

“We understand the nature of your magics,” the Stone Warrior said. “You have a far larger reservoir than your knights but all Gallagrin magic is inherently limited by the mortal the spirit is bonded to. You are powerful now, but each use of magic drains you, and without your homeland to call upon for support you cannot replenish yourself once you are exhausted.”

“You would plumb the depths of our strength and commit your realm to enmity with Gallagrin then?” Alari asked.

“Gallagrin has already chosen war, and in violating the sacred borders of our realm you have lost that battle whether you know it yet or not,” the Stone Warrior said.

“Are you receiving your orders directly from the Green Council or are you merely an underling interpreting their orders to your own ends?” Alari asked.

The Stone Warriors charged up the gems on their bodies in response, signaling that the time for diplomacy was finished. Alari sighed in regret. There were so many choices the Green council could have made. Their determination to head down the most miserable path for all was particularly frustrating though as, one after another, the options for a peaceful resolution to the conflict were removed from the game board.

The gathering charge in the Stone Warrior’s gem precipitated a lightning storm far worse that their initial assault but Alari didn’t allow them to renew their attack. She blurred briefly in place and each Stone Warrior exploded into a cloud of dust, their gems shattered to an irrecoverable mist of glittering powder.

“What just happened?” Iana asked.

“The Council tried to kill you,” Alari said, brushing off her shoulders. “Though it’s unclear why.”

“They’re afraid you’re going to use me against them,” Iana said. Her breaths were rapid and her eyes slightly unfocused.

“If the Council still holds your loyalty we will not ask you to act against them,” Alari said. “As the commander of the assault on Senkin, you were privy to details of the attack we needed to know, but the Council itself can provide that information as well.”

“I am not going to betray my homeland,” Iana said.

“Do you believe those who tried to assassinate you were working for the good of your homeland?” Alari asked.

“Maybe,” Iana said. “I don’t know what you can do with me, or how I would know if you were doing anything. If I’m exposing them, then…”

Her voice trailed off as she wrestled with the idea.

Alari let the girl ponder her situation. There would be deep roots of conditioning and loyalty dug into her psyche. Alari knew how hard those could be to throw off. For all the horrors her father had committed, she had always been spared from his madness. Choosing to challenge him for the Gallagrin Pact Spirit had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.  She couldn’t imagine that asking a young girl who was raised for combat to turn her back on the realm she was sworn to protect would be any easier.

So she didn’t try.

“I do not believe the world will be better with you dead,” Alari said, slipping into casual speech. “And the Council is mistaken to think I would ever use you to get to them. My desire to speak with them is because I want to bring representatives from both nations to the peace table. Senkin and the Council, if they could be reunited, would be a shining beacon to the rest of the realms, showing how we don’t need the mandates of the gods to co-exist with one another.”

“That is a big goal,” Iana said.

“It has been noted that my aims sometimes exceed my reach,” Alari said.

“What do you do then?” Iana asked.

“Reach farther,” Alari said.

“That must be easy for you,” Iana said. “The earth and the winds answer to you.”

“Only at great cost,” Alari said. “And power alone isn’t everything.”

“There are many paths to victory, for some the cost is too high, for some the road is too long. Always strive for the victories that leave you most able to secure more in the future,” Iana said, as though reciting from a textbook.

“You’ve had military training your whole life, haven’t you?” Alari asked.

“It’s what I was born for,” Iana said. “It’s who I am meant to be.”

“Meant to be by whom?” Alari asked.

“What?” Iana asked.

“Who meant you to be in the military so young?” Alari asked. “If you started as an infant, it wasn’t a choice you made.”

“I am Raprimdel,” Iana said. “I worked for that. I chose that.”

“The Raprimdel are some of the highest class of soldiers in the Green Council’s armies,” Alari said. “Did you have any other choice of what to be though? Or were your only options whether the lead or follow?”

Iana scowled but her eyes filled with tears.

“I am Raprimdel,” she said again. “I worked hard for that. It’s what I am.”

Alari saw the gaping wound in Iana’s heart. The one Alari had put there hours ago.

Iana’s identity was bound up in her role as commander of the Council’s forces. Her defeat at the front lines cracked that sense of self, and then the Council’s betrayal had widened that chasm in her soul even further.

Ordinary failure is difficult. Failure when it feels like a judgement on your worth as a person is even worse. The hardest part for Alari was that she didn’t know if it would be possible to reach the young girl. Life had thrown them together at an odd angle and what Iana needed might not be something that Alari could give.

Since the only other option was to do nothing at all and watch the girl be assassinated by the next strike team the Council sent, Alari refused to back away. Instead she changed her approach.

“As Raprimdel, are you sworn to the realm or to those who sit on the Green Council?” Alari asked.

“They are one and the same,” Iana said.

“And if you discovered one member of the Council was working against the rest?” Alari asked.

“The Council stands united,” Iana said.

“The Council is united, they are justified in their war and they have earned your trust,” Alari said. “But they will not speak to the other realms with a single voice, not even to provide the easy justifications for the war they are raging, and they would slay you despite the loyalty you shown them now. What do you think of that?”

“I think you’ve taken everything from me,” Iana said. “Sacrifice is all I have left.”

“No, it’s not,” Alari said. “You have your realm and all of the people in it. You are their protector, but that also means that they are your support.”

“But they think I should be…” Iana choked on the word and turned away, shame flushing her face at the unintended display of emotion. “I’m a danger to them. I should be dead.”

“No, if you die, your realm loses a defender who has worked her whole life to be what she was needed to be. If you die, you won’t be able to speak of what you saw, and you won’t be able to stand against the next group who comes with fire in hand looking to burn the next creche to ash.”

“But if I die, then no one can get to the Council through me,” Iana said. “It’s my duty to listen to them. I have to obey their wishes.”

“No, you don’t,” Alari said. “The members on the Council are not the whole of the realm. Their wishes serve only themselves. If they cared about their people they would not rush into this war. They would rally the other realms together, they would demand justice from Senkin, and they would honor those who died by refusing to sacrifice the living under their care unless no other option remained.”

“You aren’t from our lands,” Iana said. “You don’t know what it’s like here. They made me. I owe them everything.”

“If I took over the Council, and put my own puppets in their place, would you then owe me everything?” Alari asked.

“No!” Iana said.

“Why? I would be the Council wouldn’t I? All in the realm would obey me?” Alari asked.

“You would be a false Council, you wouldn’t care about us at all,” Iana said.

“What makes you think that isn’t what’s already happened?” Alari asked. “Not that I’ve taken over the Council, but that someone on it isn’t who they appear to be.”

“That can’t be,” Iana said.

“Ask you yourself if this campaign fits with anything you know of the Council you grew up with?” Alari said. “Why would the Senkin come and burn your creche now? You’ve been the friendliest of realms for centuries. Even Paxmer and Gallagrin, who hated each other since the gods made us, never raided each other’s nurserys.”

“I saw the remains of the creche,” Iana said. “I saw the troops from Senkin burning it.”

“I know, I have to believe you, nothing less would explain the ferocity of the attack on Senkin,” Alari said. “But why now, and why won’t the Council talk about it?”

Alari could think of many scenarios to explain the Council’s lack of transparency, few of which were good. The idea that one or more of the members had been replaced a hostile party was far fetched, but from the change in Iana’s expression that didn’t matter. The girl had been pummeled by tidal waves of emotion, swept from the anchoring surety of righteous rage into a swirl of confusion and betrayal that threatened to tear apart her world. However crazy the idea of a usurper on the Council was, Iana looked willing to believe it, or at least pretend to until a better explanation came along.

“What can I do?” Iana asked.

“I still want to see the creche,” Alari said. “If you can take me there? There might be more to learn from it and even if not, if I can testify to Senkin and Inchesso and all the other realms that I saw the destruction with my own eyes. That will carry far more weight than reporting something second hand.”

Iana was silent for a moment, her eyes locked on the floor of the destroyed command center she’d lain in.

“You would do that?” she said at last. “You would speak to the realms about what you saw? Try to get them on our side?”

“I walked in here, alone, specifically to find you, to ask why you attacked Senkin,” Alari said. “To do that and then not listen to you would be idiocy of an order greater than even a queen can aspire to.”

“But what about telling the other realms?” Iana asked.

“The very best thing for my realm, and for me personally, is peace between my neighbors,” Alari said. “Peace cannot be built on lies, and it can’t be built on secrets. Those fall apart too swiftly. For the crimes committed, there has to be justice done, and atonements made. It is in every realms’ interest to see the truth of that, so I will tell them what I saw and what I will see no matter how they try to avoid me, or how little they want to listen.”

Iana was silent again before saying a simple “Thank you.”

“We will need to move out soon,” Alari said. “The Council will be sending more forces to wear me down.”

“They’ll probably try to kill me again too,” Iana said.

“I thought of that,” Alari said. “And I think I have an answer.”

The Warbringer stepped down into the remains of the command bunker and a large enclosure opened in its chest.

“I don’t want to be trapped in there,” Iana said.

“You won’t be,” Alari said. “Once you climb in, I’ll relinquish control back to you.”

“But I could run away, or attack you.”

“I know. That will be your choice,” Alari said. “If I’m unwilling to trust you though, how can I ever ask you to trust me?”

Alari didn’t like what she saw. She’d traveled deep into the Green Council’s territory, alone, tracking the connection from the Warbringer she’d commandeered to the leader of the Council’s forces that were assaulting Senkin. When the control lines that tethered the giant plant monster to its pilot lead to a small hillock under an overgrown tree, Alari had taken the only sensible course of action and ripped the tree and hillock apart before the Council’s General could escape.

From what she could see the General was long gone though. The only creatures within the underground command center were clearly support staff given how they were scurrying about and looking to everyone else for guidance on to react to a Warbringer breeching their secret lair.

The only person into the bunker who wasn’t scurrying around was a young human girl, maybe ten years old in Alari’s estimation.

The girl was suspended in a thick mesh of roots and vines which burned with bright yellow flames. Around her stood a pair of Fire Spiders, dripping lava-like venom as they prepared to finish the job they started.

“I don’t think so,” Alari said and waved her hand, calling on a negligible spark of the Gallagrin Spirit’s power.

Gale force winds snuffed the fire and blasted the Fire Spiders out of the bunker. The young girl wasn’t freed, the roots bound her too tightly, but the peril of the flames was averted at least.

Alari examine her, as the Warbringer stepped down into the remains of the bunker. The support personnel were fleeing, and Alari had no reason to pursue them. They would report her presence to their superiors, but the Council was already be aware of Alari’s movements. Eventually they would organize a response but, for the moment, the matter of an unexpected human girl concerned Alari more.

“What have they done to you?” she asked the girl. She stepped down from the Warbringer’s hand which she’d been standing in. Shock and awe was a fine tactic against enemy forces. Against ten year old girls however Alari had little interest in appearing as an all-powerful terror.

In response to Alari’s presence, the girl thrashed in her bonds, eyes wide as she tried to scramble away from both Alari and the Warbringer.

“It’s ok, I’m not here to hurt you,” Alari said. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

From the non-verbal whimpering the girl let out, Alari could see that she wasn’t afraid. She was terrified beyond the capacity for speech.

Assuming she could speak.

Alari prided herself on being a forgiving sort of person. Finding the good in others was important. People she couldn’t find the good in, she tended to decapitate with her bare hands. Granted that had only happened once, and everyone more or less agreed that the Butcher King’s head and shoulder needed to be several feet apart from each other at a minimum, but it was the sort of thing Alari didn’t want to make a habit out of. Or do. Ever again.

If the Green Council was raising human children underground and stunting their growth to the point where they couldn’t speak however? In that case, Alari wondered, if she might not have to make an exception to her general “no beheadings” policy.

Watching the child cower and shrink from her spurred royal rage at those responsible for placing the girl in such a situation, but Alari’s anger was drowned in the even greater waves of concern she felt. The Council was distant and a matter for another time. The girl was in front of her and needed aid immediately.

The Queen in Alari questioned her priorities. Was taking time to help one child appropriate with everything that was at stake? There were many children in danger. Thousands upon thousands that needed protection. In allowing events to proceed as they had, Alari was playing a perilous game with their lives, and it was likely that the game would not turn out well for all of them.

That was one reality. The other reality, the more difficult one for Alari to accept, was that even as the Queen of Gallagrin, even with all of her power, there were forces at work, tides of history, that were far beyond her ability to control.

She was playing the game as it was set before her. She was changing the rules and defying fate, but no matter how hard she tried, it wasn’t within her sphere to save everyone.  She could only do the best she could, try the most clever plans she could conceive, and hope to protect and spare as many as possible from a future that would otherwise drench the Blessed Realms in blood so deep there might be none who could rise above its surface.

That was why the girl before her mattered. This was someone she could protect. Someone whose path was entwined with her own.

“It’s ok,” she said. “I won’t do anything to you. Not unless you ask.”

Alari turned her palms up and stepped back, gesturing the Warbringer behind her to step back as well. Alari’s retreat put her a few extra feet away from the girl. The Warbringer’s took it out of the bunker altogether.

The girl quieted and eventually stopped struggling against the roots that held her suspended above the floor of the room.

“Do you want to be free of those?” Alari asked.

“Go away,” the girl said, her voice harsher and deeper than Alari guessed it would be.

“I can’t,” Alari said. “I need to find the commander of this Warbringer and I need to ask them some questions.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” the girl said. “Go away!”

Alari blinked and tilted her head. With another blink she shifted her vision over to see through the Warbringer’s eyes. Lines of magic ran through the great plant machine and down into the earth. Each ran directly into the earthen bunker.

And directly to the roots which held the girl aloft.

Alari’s breath caught in her throat, the reality of the situation falling on her in a crashing tumble.

“You command the Warbringers,” she said. “The Council raised you for this, didn’t they? They made you into a soldier? A weapon? From when? When you were born?”

The girl had regained some measure of herself and while she still shied away from Alari, there was a defiance in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“You will not take me,” the girl said. “I am Raprimdel. You took my Warbringer, but you won’t get anything from me.”

Alari searched her memories. Raprimdel was one of the Council’s military names, as much a rank as it was a family name, something like a senior General. Alari didn’t recall the details but it seemed like an odd rank for someone so young to hold. Nevertheless, Alari adjusted her bearing. The girl demanded to be treated by her rank, and Alari would honor that.

“We do not wish to either take or compromise you, Raprimdel,” Alari said, flowing into the proper mode of formal speech. “We seek only your direct and unfiltered testimony.”

“You what?” Iana asked.

“We have spoken with Senkin,” Alari said. “We would speak with the Green Council as well before committing to a course of action.”

“I’m not on the Council, and you can’t get to them through me,” Iana said.

“We acknowledge that, and thank you for the information,” Alari said. “At present however we seek to gain your view and testimony of the events which occurred. What orders you were given. What reason you were told the Council had for invading their cherished neighbor.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Iana said. “I’m not going to betray my people, no matter what you do! You can’t trick me.”

“Despite appearances, we are not your enemy, not yet,” Alari said. “Our actions on the battlefield, though taken against the Green Council’s forces, were intended to prevent greater loss of life on both sides.”

Iana remained silent.

“The swiftness of the Council’s assault suggests that their motivation for attacking Senkin is tied to some unforgivable breech on Senkin’s part,” Alari said. “We have spoken with Queen Marie of Senkin. She offered no information as to what Senkin might have done which so grossly violated the Council’s territory. The Green Council has not apprised its neighbors of this breech either, but to motivate its forces, we believe they would have told you why it was you were fighting. Unless they treat you as nothing more than a drone?”

“They didn’t have to tell me anything,” Iana said. “I saw what the Senkin did.”

“An act so horrible to provoke an invasion of another realm cannot be a state secret,” Alari said. “Gallagrin will not stand with those who perpetrate atrocities.”

“That’s what it was,” Iana said. “They murdered our children. Burned them all. An entire creche!”

It was Alari’s turn to be silent. She’d known the Council would claim some compelling justification for what they’d done, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t be something so dire. Some hopes are things to cling to though and some are not. With a slow exhalation, Alari let go of the hope that diplomacy and shows of force would be enough to resolve the issues behind the war.

“Let us free you from those bindings,” Alari said.

Iana blinked, squinted and finally nodded. Alari waved her hand and the roots that she’d usurped control over unwound from Iana’s body, releasing her gently onto the floor.

“What are you going to do to me?” Iana asked.

“We ask nothing more of you than you are willing to give,” Alari said. “The claim against Senkin is a grave one though and so must be investigated. If you can bear witness to it, we would hear your testimony. If you are not free to speak of what you have seen, then we ask you to tell us who can testify in support of the Green Council’s claim.”

“We don’t have to testify,” Iana said. “We’re not on trial. It happened. They burned the creche. Now they have to pay.”

“You speak with the certainty of experience,” Alari said. “We do not have that experience, but if evidence can support the Council’s claim, then we can act upon it.”

“You want evidence? You want to see the creche? Smell the burned bodies? It’s still there! We can go right now!” Iana said.

“If you will lead us, we shall follow,” Alari said.

“She will lead you nowhere.” From the earth, creatures forged of solid rock, carrying gems blazing with stolen starfire, emerged. There were an even dozen of them, a full squad, and from the lightning that flickered from gem to gem on their bodies, they had arrived ready for combat.

“We do not lay claim to this one as prisoner,” Alari said. “She is free to return to your ranks. If the Council wishes Gallagrin’s favor in its campaign against Senkin however, we require admittance to the creche Senkin is accused of destroying.”

“Your request is noted and rejected,” one of the Stone Warriors said.

“It is curious that the Council will not engage with Gallagrin on this point,” Alari said, watching at the Stone Warriors slowly repositioned themselves “Almost as curious as the Council’s choice to wage immediate warfare without declaration to any neighboring realms.”

“Gallagrin is unwelcome here,” the Stone Warrior said. “The Green Council is sovereign in these lands and will submit to no one’s review or censure.”

“The Green Council has always held itself apart from the affairs of the realms,” Alari said. “It has never been so foolish as to think it is not one of them though. An attack on Senkin, however well justified, must provoke a response from the rest of the realms, Gallagrin first and foremost.”

“Your response in irrelevant,” the Stone Warrior said. “You have sided with Senkin, you have violated our domain. You will be destroyed and your realm along with you.”

The attack from the Stone Warriors was instantaneous and overwhelming, but it was not aimed at Alari. On the spur of the moment, twelve of the Council’s most devastating units unleashed their full fury on the space where Iana stood, firing enough force to obliterate her completely.

Iana was familiar with anxiety, and anticipation and dread, but it wasn’t until her Warbringer was taken from her that she understood how sharp an emotion fear could be.

“She’s coming for me,” Iana said. “Dagmauru, she’s coming to find me. The one who took my Warbringer!”

“Calm yourself, Commander,” Dagmauru said. “The Gallagrin Queen can no more locate where you are than she could find one fallen leaf in all the forests of our realm.”

Iana wanted to believe Dagmauru. He was the Green Council’s War Advisor. He was her mentor. He had been right about the need to advance in a measured fashion and he had been right about the Senkin response to their invasion.

But he wasn’t right about the Gallagrin Queen.

Iana knew it down in the roots of her bones.

“Your consternation is understable,” Dagmauru said. “The arrival of so formidable a force at the battlefront was an unforeseen complication.”

“She destroyed our offensive,” Iana said. “She has power beyond anything we’ve faced before.”

“This is true,” Dagmauru said. “But the exercise of her power against your forces has won us this war.”

Iana had been trying to wiggle free of the control mesh that connected her across the distant miles to her Warbringer. She stopped, uncertain, but looking for reassurance in Dagmauru’s words.

Dagmauru pulled back to give her space, roots that had been entwining around her to hold her in place relaxing as Iana stopped struggling to escape her command bower.

“How have we won?” Iana asked, her fingers twitching at the controls for the Warbringer. At first, the connection had been numb, almost dead. Iana had lost Warbringers before though. Starved for magic on a long campaign, or caught in an unexpectedly ferocious ambush, the Warbringers were powerful but not indestructible. Whatever the Gallagrin Queen had done to Iana’s Warbringer though hadn’t destroyed it, and over time sensation had returned.

Iana could feel her Warbringer marching again, the difference was, she could no longer control it. That was the source of her terror. Not that she’d been defeated. Defeat was an inconvenience and an expense. Loss of control though was something else.

Warbringers took significant amounts of time to grow and develop, so the destruction of one was always a black mark on one’s record, and a blow against the controller’s pride. As a commander, Iana had proven herself better and stronger than her peers but even the best had their off days or runs of bad luck. In her hardest fought battle, she’d gone through three of the giant plant machines, but finally overcoming the massed army of divine rejects with a broken down and barely functional fourth unit that she’d scrounged from a regrowth pool that was within range.

Switching Warbringers wasn’t commonplace for a controller of Iana’s stature but it was always an option. Except the Gallagrin Queen had taken that option away.

In the command bower, miles from the front line, Iana’s actual physical form lay nestled in a safe and well protected net of roots and vines. Here and there, they enwrapped her, reading from her body and mind the actions to transmit to the Warbringer.

Or they had during the battle. Afterwards they had become a prison. Unresponsive to her touch and locked in around her, unwilling to let her go.

“We have won the war, because the Gallagrin Queen has committed her force improperly,” Dagmauru said. “Her presence was the daunting factor in our plans to invade Gallagrin if our southern neighbor came to the aid of Senkin. By striking where she did she revealed to us that her borders lie undefended.”

“Gallagrin still has armies doesn’t it?” Iana asked. She could feel the rumbling steps of the Warbringer as it surged closer. Her troops had hesitated after Iana’s Warbringer fell into the Gallagrin Queen’s hand. They probably couldn’t have stopped its advance anyways, not with the Queen protecting it, but they might have slowed it down. Iana wished they’d slow it down, because she felt like it was getting so near that she could feel the thunder of its footfalls with her own body rather than just through the link she retained to it.

“The Gallagrin armies are in disarray,” Dagmauru said. “They are not yet united following the coup that was attempted a month ago. The Queen’s move fails her country in another sense though. By exposing herself and venturing into our domain, she can be captured and Gallagrin can lose it’s divine gifts permanently.”

That drew Iana’s full attention.

“Is that possible?”

“For those who have delved deeply enough into the secrets of the Divine?” Dagmauru said. “Yes. All things are possible for the Council. The Gallagrin Queen made a grand gesture, possibly to win the Senkin’s favor. It will be the last such display she ever puts on.”

“But how can we stop her?” Iana asked. “She took my Warbringer. She still has it! And she’s locked me out of controlling it. If she can do that, can’t she take over everything?”

“I will not lie to you commander,” Dagmauru said. “That was a surprising achievement, and it did raise concern among the Council. We have analyzed the attack though. When the Gallagrin Queen usurped control of your Warbringer, she did so after being attacked with our own transformation mists.”

“I saw that, she breathed in the yellow mist and breathed something else out,” Iana said.

“Gallagrin magic is centered on the art of transformation,” Dagmauru said. “We believe she worked the transformation on the mist herself, and turned it into a control agent that responded to her will rather than yours. So long as we don’t give her any additional material to work with, she should not be able to repeat that trick.”

“Do we have a plan to defeat her?” Iana asked. “Will the Council be safe from her? She might still more of the mist and if she takes one of them…”

“Calm yourself commander,” Dagmauru said. “The Gallarin Queen will not be allowed anywhere near the Council.”

“Are we sure we know what her capabilities are though?” Iana asked. “That hurricane waves she unleashed on us were never mentioned in our briefings on Gallagrins troops.”

“The Gallagrin Queen is a force far beyond any of her soldiers, but even she has limits,” Dagmauru said. “She’s testing those limited, but we already know where they lie.”

“But we’ve never had a chance to study her, have we?” Iana asked.

“Our understanding of magic has advanced beyond the need for direct study,” Dagmauru said. “The Council can calculate, based on the fundamental principles we have discovered, exactly how much magic the Gallagrin Queen can invoke and exactly what she is capable of doing with it. Believe me when I say that we are prepared for the worst that she can offer us, and we are not concerned.”

Iana breathed in deeply. The alchemical mix of nature’s scents, from rich loam to growing moss to the dozens of fresh spring flowers that surrounded them reminded her where she was. Home. Among those who sheltered her and whom she sheltered in turn.

The rest of her troops were in their own command bowers, each safely isolated from the others so that a foe couldn’t stumble on a single command center and destroy the brains behind an entire army. That was how the Green Council was organized. Each part in support of the other, each bearing part of the load that was distributed to all. No matter what force the Gallagrin Queen could throw against them, the Green Council was safe, and so she was safe as well.

“Can you get me out of this command bower?” she asked.

“You need only release your hold on your Warbringer’s controls,” Dagmauru said. “We restrained you because tearing free would have done you great injury.”

“That’s what I need help with,” Iana said. “I’ve been trying to release from the Warbringer. It won’t let me.”

“That’s not possible,” Dagmauru said. “The Warbringer cannot be taken from you, but all you need to do is relax and you can disengage from it. We spoke of this in your first class. You were probably too scared before to properly relax. Try again.”

Iana took another long, slow breath and forced her muscles to go placid as a winter lake. She imagined the roots and vines that held her relaxing as well. One by one they would slacken and release her limbs, her body and finally her mind.

Her troops would wonder at the loss of their commander, but her second-in-command Wylinka would take care of them. Iana smiled at that thought. Her troops were good and Wylika was an excellent second. Based on her performance in this crisis, she could even earn her own command. Far from being jealous, Iana wished her second the best of fortune. It would be heart warming to be able to great Wylika as an equal rather than a subordinate.

With her body relaxed and limp, Iana waited. And waited. The control roots which should have been unwinding weren’t. The vines that tethered her mind to her Warbringer were not releasing her. Panic rose, but Iana slammed it down. She was trained better than that.

“I am relaxed. I am unafraid,” she said in a calm, measured voice. “The controls are not responsive yet though. Can we have an external check done on them. Maybe something is impeding their release?”

“I have your Tenders examining the linkages,” Dagmauru said. “Their reports agree with yours. The command net is not disengaging. I will have them try a physical override.”

Iana waited. She could still feel her body, something she occasionally let go of in the heat of battle, but she couldn’t feel anything being done to the roots that restrained her.

With great effort, Iana forced her eyes open. The bower was only dimly lit but long adaption to its confines left her able to see quite well.

The command bower was located in a small underground grotto. Water from a nearby river pooled at the far end and around her a wall of roots and solid earth rose just high enough for her to stand upright if she hadn’t been laying prone. Around the bower, various creatures, both humanoid and not, scurried. Each played a role in maintaining the careful weave of magics that connected Iana to her Warbringer and each one seemed to moving with the kind of panicked distress that Iana had only seen during a simulated calamity drill where everything conceivable went wrong at once.

“The physical override isn’t working,” Dagmauru said. “I am sorry Commander.”

“Sorry? Sorry for what?” Iana asked, the panic around her creeping in her voice.

“The command network is being corrupted,” Dagmauru said. “You were right. The Gallagrin Queen is tracking back to your position.”

“Sleeping Gods!” Iana swore. “How long do we have?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dagmauru said. “We cannot allow her to gain access to the Deep Roots. If she can access our secure communications, she will have a method tracking the Council itself.”

“Cut me out then!” Iana said as she started to struggle to break free once more. Injuries be damned, she couldn’t let the Gallagrin Queen catch her.

“It’s too late for that,” Dagmauru said. “I am sorry Commander, but we have no choice.”

“No choice about what?” Iana asked, confusing making a fuzzy mess of her mind.

In response she saw two of the Fire Spider guards scuttle down off the ceiling. Their poison did more than kill their foe. It reduced the victim to ash in less than a minute.

“You’re going to burn me free?” Iana asked, calculating how much that was going to hurt. She didn’t have enough information to gauge it more specifically than “a lot”.

“It has been a pleasure advising you,” Dagmauru said. “You will be remembered.”

Iana’s eyes flew wide. Remembered? Dagmauru wasn’t speaking of freeing her. The spiders were going to burn her, not the bindings.

“No, wait,” she said. “The queen’s not here yet. Don’t do this.”

“We cannot take the chance of being compromised,” Dagmauru said. “We must remain pure.”

“But I am still pure,” Iana said. “Don’t throw me away. I’m still part of you.”

Only silence answered her. Silence broken by the clicking of the Fire Spiders as they slashed a path through the command web.

“No!” Iana screamed. “Dagmauru! Come back! Burn the bower, but get me out! I am still loyal. I can still serve you!”

The Fire Spiders began to spit venom to hurry their progress and Iana felt the searing heat of the flames roasting her skin. The nauseating stench of ash filled her nostrils and she lost the last of what little composure she had left.

“No! Gods No! Don’t do this! Dagmauru! Don’t do this! I’ve served you! I’ve always served you! Don’t let me burn! I don’t want to die! Not like this!”

The Fire Spiders were neither creatures of mercy or pity though. They tore the last of the restraints that shielded Iana from them and she saw her death reflected in their hundred eyes. It wasn’t going to be a good death, it wasn’t going to be quick and it wasn’t going to be painless.

In the end though, it also wasn’t going to be at all. Death and flame were both held back by a miracle.

The sound of Iana’s scream of undiluted terror was dwarfed as the walls and roof of the bower were ripped from the earth by an unstoppable force.  Sunlight, pure and brilliant, flooded the hidden chamber and in the shadow of her Warbringer, Iana saw that the Queen of Gallagrin had come for her.

Haldri Paxmer was a name the former Queen of Paxmer was ready to leave behind. It came as a surprise to her to discover that though. She’d been unseated from her throne for barely more than a month. People didn’t change so drastically as to reject their own name in a the space of a handful of weeks. But then Haldri always knew she was special. As the Dragon Princess who won the throne, that fact was self-evident. If the time had come to shed her old scales and take on a new and more deadly form, then so be it.

“Your advice proved most sound,” Acting Captain Hexcourt Frederic said. “Whom may we praise in citations to our our Queen?”

Frederic had been the first to fall in line when Haldri arrived at the makeshift field office. His advancement to Captain had come as a battlefield promotion when the assigned Captain for the Solar Paladins had dropped in the first moments of combat. Frederic was technically fourth down the chain of command for the Solar Paladins and held the post only due to purchasing the rank he felt would meet his needs for propriety once his term was served. That the remainder of the Senkin command was filled with more officers like Frederic than not, made Haldri’s task both easier (in terms of filling a power vacuum) and  more complex (in terms of utilizing the strength of the forces available, as strength and talent were in short supply). Nonetheless, Haldi knew her answer without the need to spend time thinking about it.

“Your Queen will know who was responsible for turning the course of the war,” Haldri said. Technically true – Marie would know that Alari had intervened, but the troops would read the statement as a claim that Haldri was responsible, and accord her the deference she required. “We spoke before I journeyed here.” Also true, though not in the manner the troops would percieve it as. “You may address me however as Lady Fortune.”

As sobriquets went, it sounded ostentatious to Haldri’s ears, but for what she would require of them, Haldri needed her troops to believe she was nigh unto mythical in knowledge and power.

“An apt name under the circumstances.” Captain Sunrover Guenievre. “We wouldn’t have survived the night without you.”

Guenievre was one of the other six leaders of the Senkin force, and like Frederic had gained rank by filling a battlefield vacancy. Unlike Frederic though, she was used to command, having held the rank of Captain prior to the battle. She’d lost the rank as a penalty for some misadventure or misbehavior. Haldri didn’t care to push hard enough to find out which. It only mattered that Guinievre knew that regaining her former position was a tenuous thing and poor performance on the field would doom whatever career she aspired to possess afterwards.

“I am more concerned that we may not survive the day, even with my counsel,” Haldri said, striving to keep the focus on the matter at hand. The Green Council was a threat sufficient to overthrow a realm. Haldri needed to make sure it was also perceived as enough a threat that she could overthrow the normal rules command and usurp the power she needed. If Frederic and Guenievre and the other leader remained off balance, they would have fewer questions for their ‘advisor’ and allow her orders to simply flow throw them and be acted on as the hands acts on the orders of the mind. “Has any word come of reinforcement troops being dispatched?”

“None as of yet,” Frederic said. “But certainly they are mustering as we speak.”

“That’s unlikely at this juncture,” Haldri said. “Queen Marie is not a fool. The troops needed here are not ones she will be willing to spend so easily.”

The situation was almost too easy to play into. If Haldri had planned things from the start, she would have been reading from a script very similar the one she was inventing on the fly.

“But if we fall, the heart of Senkin lies open to the invaders plunder,” Guenievre said.

“Not if,” Haldri said. “When. The Green Council has mounted an unprecedented offensive in this attack. The forces we have here are not prepared to resist an onslaught that has is as built up and calculated as the Council’s is.”

An old voice in her heart laughed at that idea. If there was one failing she was never guilty of as the Queen of Paxmer it was being unprepared for an assault upon her realm. Against the Butcher King and his daughter, Haldri had always been ready to repel their armies and protect her people.

‘Her people’. She had called them that for so long, she couldn’t think of the citizens of Paxmer in any other manner. They’d been hers just as the gold in her hordes had been hers, each one counted and catalogued and leveraged to bring still greater wealth and power to the throne of Paxmer. No one and nothing was ever allowed to take what was hers.

And yet, she’d lost them. Her people. Her treasures. Everything she’d fought so hard to protect. No. Not protect. Guard. One does not protect a vault. One guards it. Because what’s inside doesn’t matter. All that matters is who it belongs to.

“You said that retreat is impossible though?” Frederic said, wringing his hands together. Although he was unwounded, his pallor was worse than some of the lucky few who’d made it to the medical tents that were setup after Alari’s assault on the Green Council’s forces.

“It is,” Haldri said. While that also served to place the Senkin forces under her control, Haldri wished it wasn’t true. If there was a real chance for any part of the Senkin force finding safety in fleeing the field, Haldri would have arranged to travel with them and left the rest of the Senkin to their inevitable demise.

“So we’re doomed then?” Guinievre asked. “If we can’t fight and we can’t run, our only option is to die with honor.”

Haldri had to suppress a smile and wistful longing. What she would have given, in hindsight, for Senkin to be Paxmer’s northern neighbor rather than Gallagrin. Black-and-white thinkers were so easy to manipulate, and so soon to abandon a situation when their imagination failed them. If Paxmer had been set to contend with Senkin when the gods went into their slumber, Paxmer might have conquered the world.

Of course, it was being neighbors with Paxmer which drove Galagrin to develop the martial prowess and acumen it possessed, and that process probably would have repeated with any of the other realms.

“We cannot retreat, and we cannot resist the Green Council’s offensive,” Haldri said. “But we are not doomed. The Council expects Senkin to defend its lands, we’re not going to do that.”

“But we have to defend the realm,” Frederic said. “Mounting a defense against invaders is the reason we exist as a fighting force in the first place.”

“The Green Council is prepared for your defenses. They can push through them because you’ve used the same tactics for centuries,” Haldri said. She didn’t have to guess at that, the troops she’d spoken with had proudly proclaimed how expert they were in proven battle formations that went developed while the gods still walked the Realms. That the gods no longer walked the realms or offered their direct aid in support of the battle formations was lost of everyone but herself as far as Haldri could see.

“But how can they know us that well,” Guinievre said. “We’ve never run joint missions with the Council forces!”

“Do you only perform missions when the sky is clear and no birds are on the wing?” Haldri asked. “Are your troops warded against scrying magics? And do you possess sufficient prowess with scrying magics yourself to spy on all of these who would spy on you?”

The race in technique for those capable of mastering scrying spells was part of an eternal war fought between all of the “intelligence divisions” of the various realms. Everyone could spy on one another, to various degrees, but no one knew if they could see everything, or how much of what they saw was what the realm under observation wanted them to see.

“So, we need to hide from the Green Council then?” Frederic asked. “That’s our other option besides a failed retreat and a failed defense?”

“Yes, but not in the manner you think,” Haldri said. “We can’t hide and let the Council’s forces pass. They will be looking for us, and if we crawl into a warren like a pack of rabbits then they will be able to set the terms of the battle, as they’ve set the terms of the war so far.”

“You had us harry their forces last night,” Guinievre said. “We used our most mobile units but they are exhausted or injured or both from the work. I don’t think we can call on them again for such service.”

“We will need to press them back into battle before their wounds are mended, but you are correct, we cannot use them again so soon,” Haldri said. For a brief, traitorous moment, she wished Alari were in the room. The Senkin Captains were too easy to manipulate. They didn’t push back hard enough which left Haldri feeling unusually shaky in her reasoning.

As a Queen she hadn’t lacked for advisors. She hadn’t been overly generous in her treatment of them though and had dismissed their opinions as simply lesser than her own. Arguing with Alari had been a shocking change in light of that. Both before and after their conflict ended, Alari had been someone who Haldri wanted to dismiss but couldn’t.

Their discussions were civil, but barbed. Haldri spent many of them looking to inflict what shallow wounds she could on her captor, but Alari’s verbal defenses were formidable. Faced with a worthy opponent, Haldri felt her mind latch on to the flow of words between them and expand as it tried to form ever sharper rebuttals to Alari’s points.

If Alari were here, she would act as a perfect sounding board for Haldri’s hastily assembled schemes. Of course, if Alari were here, Haldri’s schemes would be placing the Paxmer Queen at the heart of the conflict and hoping the chaos of battle would do what Paxmer’s long drawn out plans had failed to achieve.

“Our forces are still in disarray,” Frederic said. “Even if we present them with a masterful battle strategy, I don’t think they will be able to carry it off.”

In his own manner, Frederic was a wise commander. He knew his limitations, and he knew the limitations of the troops he commanded. If he could have paired imagination with those traits, he might even have been a good one.

“It’s been long enough,” Haldri said. “They’re not in disarray, they just don’t want to fight a foe that can crush them into jelly or transform them into fungus with a simple cloud of dust. That’s why the strategy we must pursue must be a simple one.”

“Won’t the Green Council be ready for any simple strategy we employ though?” Frederic asked.

“Not if we present them with the right mystery,” Haldri said. “Give a commander an unexpected puzzle and they were lose focus unless they are trained in the arts of deception themselves,” Haldri said.

“What mystery can we give them that they would care about though?” Guenievre asked.

“We’re going to make them believe that our army has doubled in size, despite no one seeing any forces arrive to reinforce us,” Haldri said.

“We don’t have any Sunlost illusion casters though,” Frederic said.

“Yes, and that’s going to work in our favor,” Haldri said. “When they see the extra people on our battlements, they’ll believe that what they are looking at is real, because they’ll know it can’t be an illusion.”

Undine wasn’t the type to want to stab people. He liked to think of himself as a gentleman, refined and assured and with his impulses towards violence well under control.

“If you decapitate the General, our Queen will take the blood price Gallagrin has to pay for him out of your yearly bonus,” Jyl said as she worked the etchings on her ceremonial sword of office clean with a fine needle. “For reference though, our yearly bonus is pretty large.”

“You wouldn’t dare offer violence to me,” General Pentacourt said, his gaze flicking rapidly from the mundane (but still quite functional) sword at his throat, Undine’s grim expression and the rest of the Gallagrin delegation.

“Violence is already offered,” Undine said, pressing the General back into the wall with greater force. “Retract your statement regarding our Queen or I shall assume the offer has been accepted.”

“You can not threaten me,” Pentacourt said. “If you draw so much as a drop of my blood, the entire force of the the Senkin army will be turned against you.”

In his life, Undine had faced many challenges that revolved around being taken seriously. From declarations as to his basic identity, to support for his dream of becoming a Pact Knight, he couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t struggling to have someone believe the very simple words that came out of his mouth.

With a resigned sigh he drew his blade across the General’s throat. Not far, and not deep. Just enough to open a nick the size of a shaving cut. Just enough to allow a single large drop of blood to run down the General’s neck and into the white collar of his uniform.

“General, you will want to know that Guardian Undine has only recently come into the service of Her Majesty the Queen of Gallagrin and that he takes his service to her quite seriously,” Jyl said. “As his commander, I could order him to release you but there is a problem which prevents that.”

“What problem?” Pentacourt asked, the whites of his eyes full revealed.

“I don’t want to,” Jyl said. The elf looked up from her maintenance work and flashed Pentacourt a bright smile.

Before the General could say anything else and escalate the conflict to a level where decapitation was the only viable outcome, the doors to the Senkin Royal Strategy room drew open and a proclaimer announced; “Her Royal Majesty, the Queen is present, all rise.”

Undine didn’t need to rise, nor did General Pentacount. They’d been seated side-by-side before Pentacourt’s ill-advised declaration had lifted Undine from his seat and inspired him to drag the General by the throat to the nearest wall.

The rest of the room hadn’t remained calm in the face of that sudden burst of violence, but it had become very still. With the Queen’s arrival it looked like that stillness would be broken and the room would descend into a chaotic melee.

“General Pentacourt, why are you here?” Queen Marie asked, with no evidence of surprise or concern coloring her tone.

“He claimed he received reports from the events at the border yesterday and what has transpired since then,” General Skybright Phillip said. “The reports in question seem to be…biased, however.”

“Pentacourt, leave this assembly at once,” Queen Marie said, disregarding the fact that the General would have certain issues with obeying that order if Undine wished to insist on the apology for Queen Alari.

Undine considered that, and considered the kind of enemy he’d made in striking a General in the Senkin army. As long as they were within Senkin, Pentacourt would have resources to strike back against the insult Undine had given him.

Slaying one of the Queen of Senkin’s Generals in front of her wasn’t a brilliant move for a number of reasons of course, not the least of which being that the Queen would have to kill him, perhaps personally.

Oddly, that didn’t feel like it mattered that much to Undine. He had no wish to die, and no belief that he could withstand the displeasure of a monarch of the Blessed Realms, but what mattered more was being true to who he wanted to be.

In his mind, Undine’s ideal, most perfect self, was as the definition of “a true knight of the realm”. Poise and confidence, strength and courage, daring and sacrifice; those were all elements of what a True Knight was, but the most important qualities were far more challenging and elusive, right-action and merciful restraint.

Any fool could be confident and any bully could be strong. Those who cared for nothing could sacrifice everything on a whim and courage was a goad that led people to the stupidest of deeds.

Knowing the right thing to do though? That was something that required a lifetime of practice and a spirit that didn’t shy away from reflection on all of its weaknesses. For as difficult as it was to admit one’s own shortcomings though it was the quality of mercy, that was the greatest of challenges to embrace.

Undine’s blade hesitated for a moment at Pentacourt’s throat. The General would only understand an answer of steel to his words. Undine knew that. And he knew it didn’t matter.

What the General did, would be on the General’s head. What mattered in that moment wasn’t the General’s guilt or innocence, or the Queen of Senkin’s commands. What mattered was that the Queen Undine had sworn to serve wouldn’t want him to kill the man who slandered her name. Vice Commander Lafli looked willing to deal with the political fallout from spilling noble blood on foreign soil, but that didn’t make it right, just convenient, for certain oddly considered values of “convenient.”

Undine could be better than that.

With a flourish, he spun his sword in a parrying circle as he backed away from the General, wiping it clean of the drop of Senkin blood that ran across it before sheathing the blade at his side.

General Pentacourt blinked, caught  between his fear, his rage and the commandment of his Queen. Self-preservation won out, beating the other impulses he harbored and he wordlessly nodded as he fled the chamber at a pace that only barely qualified as dignified.

“What is the word from the front?” Queen Marie asked, pointedly ignoring the flight of one of her senior generals.

“The Green Council’s advance has been checked,” Skybright Phillip said.

“We asked for word from the front,” Queen Marie said. “Not what we already know.”

“In this case your General is reporting new information Your Majesty,” Vice Commander Lafli said. “The situation on the war’s border seems to have shifted over the last evening.”

Queen Marie shuffled over to the Royal Commander chair at the far end of the room and dropped into it like a pile of weary bricks landing in the shape of a queen.

“Explain,” she said, closing her eyes and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“We learned late yesterday that the Gallagrin Queen arrived at the battlefield as the momentum of the conflict was against us,” Skybright said.

“We were getting our guts handed to us in a horse bag,” the Queen said, somehow mixing commoner phraseology with noble speech rhythms.

“Yes,” Skybright said. “Guts everywhere from the reports.”

“And Gallagrin saved us,” Queen Marie said.

“From all reports, yes, she did,” Skybright said. “We’re not clear exactly how, but her arrival at the main thrust of the Green Council’s forces was described by several witnesses as ‘apocalyptic’.”

“So she’s still holding that front for us?” the Senkin Queen asked.

“”Apparently not,” Jyl said. “That’s what General Pentacourt came to tell us.”

“Pentacourt’s an ass,” Queen Marie said. “Knowing him, we’re sure his word choice was close to worthy of decapitiation, but we would still know of what he spoke.”

“If his report is credible, and in the larger details it likely is, the Queen of Gallagrin did not stop at the Green Council’s front line,” Skybright said. “She apparently ventured into the territory held by the Green Council’s forces and then into the deadly mists that shelter their troops.”

“The Council’s mist weapon won’t be fatal to her,” Jyl said. “Your General cited that as proof that our Queen had betrayed Senkin and left those of us behind to enact nefarious deeds in her name.”

“His words were no doubt more quarrelsome than that?” Queen Marie asked.

“If I hear him speak again, I am likely to cut his tongue out,” Undine said, providing what he felt was a fair warning on his limitations and lack of maturity as a Knight.

“We shall have to remember that the next time a ball promises to be too dull,” Queen Marie said. “There is more news though. If Gallagrin has passed into the Green Council’s region of control then was a truce negotiated?”

“We have received no word of a truce Your Majesty,” Skybright said, “And you are correct, there is more news. The Council launched another attack under the cover of darkness.”

“After Gallagrin stopped their first advance?” Queen Marie asked.

“Yes, hours after,” Skybright said.

“And how did our troops fair on this engagement? Did the extra time to rally perhaps improve their skills to a degree where they were less of a colossal disappointment to Senkin?”

“The troops fought valiantly You Majesty,” Skybright said.

“Yes, yes, how much land did they give up to the nighttime sorte?” Queen Marie asked.

“None,” Skybright said.

“None?”

“Their lines held Your Majesty,” Skybright said. “The commanders in charge regretted to report that they were not able to secure more than one keep in the area which had been taken, but the Green Council advanced no further, and has not successfully advanced since.”

The Queen was silent for a long moment and everyone else in the room followed her lead.

“Do you mean to say that the worst troops our nobles could provide somehow managed to stem the tide of the Green Council’s most determined attack, one the Council has been planning for centuries or longer?”

“It does seem incredible when put in those terms,” Skybright said. “But the couriers who brought the reports are among our most reliable.”

“We would sooner believe that the Council has developed a means to suborn our messengers than accept the reports they bring,” Queen Marie said. “Otherwise there is too great a chance that some strategy is afoot and the Green Council has outmaneuvered us again.”

“Is it impossible to believe our cavaliers and paladins cannot rise to the occasion? Perhaps the Gallagrin Queen’s attack exposed some weakness in the Council’s troops which our own have learned to exploit?” Skybright looked barely convinced by his own argument and the Queen even less so.

“And is this new weakness mentioned in the reports?” Queen Marie asked.

Skybright looked down at the paper in front of him.

“No, Your Majesty, not that I have seen so far.”

“Then it is no weakness of the Green Council that we see in their failure to move forward, but some deeper, more cunning plan.”

Undine wondered if the Senkin Queen was as paranoid (or insightful) as she appeared to be, why the Green Council’s attack had come as the surprise that it so clearly had.

“There is another possibility,” Jyl said.

“You would advise us that the Green Council is not moving to attack us along unseen paths?” Queen Marie asked.

“Oh, it’s very possible they’re doing that too,” Jyl said. “But there may be another explanation for the Council’s failure to advance.”

She passed one of the reports over to Skybright who passed it along to the Queen.

“What are we to see in here?” the Queen asked.

“This one was written by one of the field lieutenants,” Jyl said. “Or, if I understand your military structure correctly, one of the  guys who has to actually fight. Notice that he mentions how well his troops were able to enact the strategy drawn up by their new advisor?”

“Yes,” Queen Marie said. “This advisor sounds quite exceptional. We would have learned of them sooner had we known our forces possessed such a genius.”

“I don’t think your forces do,” Jyl said. “Not before today, and not in an official capacity anyways.”

“Who is this genius of who you speak then?” Queen Marie asked.

“Do you notice who’s not mentioned in any of these reports?” Jyl asked. “They all speak of Queen Alari venturing into the Green Council’s mists alone. Because she was the only person there who could survive them. The thing is, she didn’t leave here alone.”

“The Queen of Paxmer?” Queen Marie said. “She’s the one leading our forces!”

Dae looked over the broad table that dominated the Gallagrin Royal Command room. For years the milieu depicted on the table had been focused on Gallagrin alone, with the troop placements of the various noble houses being of primary concern because they were either busy murdering each other, or had to be positioned so that doing so was a less attractive option than staying where they were.

“We need to change the scale of the representation,” Dae said, speaking to Faen Kemoral and a small group of Alari’s military advisors.

“We have a standard projection map which shows us ten miles of space into the Green Council’s borders,” Faen said.

“We’ll need more than that,” Dae said. “How prepared is the Scout Corp for deep recon assignments?”

“We can handle it,” Ogma Daili, the acting chief of Gallagrin’s Reconnaissance troops  said. Like many branches of the Gallagrin military, command had rested until a month prior with one of the unlanded Gallagrin nobles. As those nobles were all under arrest, Gallagrin’s armed forces were following the next person down along each of the chains of command. Ogma at least seemed ready to handle the transition of power, though Dae knew she couldn’t depend on that being true in all cases.

“With all due respect to the Recon Corp,” Faen said, “You can’t know that. Recon has been tasked only with observation of Gallagrin’s internal state for close to a century, and their missions into the Green Council have never penetrated deeply into that Realm. Our troops will face obstacles they have no ability to foresee and potentially no ability to overcome.”

“Agreed.  These won’t be the kind of assignments Recon is used to, but we need their intel,” Dae said. “And not just on the Green Council.”

“Senkin is cooperating with us though, aren’t they?” Faen asked.

“Senkin is looking out for their own interests,” Dae said. “At the moment those seem to align with ours, and they’ve been bloodied enough by the Council that they’re not likely to turn any aggressive eye in our direction. We’ll let our ambassadorial staff in Senkin keep us up to date on conditions there. It’s Inchesso which we’ll need Recon to scout as well.”

“We have ambassadors in Inchesso as well though, and they’re not reporting any significant troop movements,” Faen said.

“Not reporting is not the same as not seeing any,” Dae said. “Especially in light of the embassy that Queen Alari dispatched to the Lialarus family, we should be seeing rapid mobilization of their forces in one direction or the other within the next forty eight hours.”

“Two days?” Ogma said. “How long do we have to infiltrate and setup observation posts.”

“Twenty hours at that outside,” Dae said. “And they need to be secure. The effort is useless if we lose our Recon troops in the process. We need a steady stream of information, not one heroic burst of it.”

“We will make it happen,” Ogma said, her eyes wide as she clutched the side of the table.

“How?” Faen asked, turning to Dae rather than Ogma. “Akorli, your wonderful at inspiring heroics, but overextending our forces here is the surest method of hurling ourselves into the jaws of defeat. We cannot afford to fight a war on two fronts.”

Dae sighed, but smiled as well. Faen Kemoral was a reasonable man and a seasoned soldier. His advice and tactics were tempered by years of experience and a mind that saw past the usual layers of obfuscation life presented. That he was running behind her on this occasion was solely due to the secrecy Alari had shrouded her plans in.

“Ogma, please seal the doors,” Dae said. They were closed but invoking the privacy wards meant the three of them were incommunicado from the outside world for the next hour at a minimum. Dae knew her luck. Something would go wrong in that time, something her authority was needed to resolve. Sometimes though it was necessary to embrace a bit of chaos in order to head off a much large set of problems.

“The Queen left secret orders didn’t she?” Faen asked, sinking in her chair and bowing his head.

Wordlessly, Dae passed a letter to him that bore the Royal insignia in the wax seal that closed it.

“Secret orders?” Ogma asked, after invoking the glyphs on the doors. “Why would she do that?”

“Because she knows Highcrest is filled with spies,” Faen said, weighing the letter in his hand like it was a sleeping serpent.

“Should I be present for this?” Ogma asked. It was too late for her to leave, but Dae appreciated the offer. Unfortunately for Ogma, she wasn’t going to escape the promotion Dae had in mind for her.

“Only members of the Gallagrin War Council are allowed to know these plans,” Dae said. “So yes, you are requested and required to be present for this.”

“What about the rest of the War Council?” Ogma asked.

“The War Council is fully assembled,” Dae said, causing Faen close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose.

“The Queen cannot expect the three of us to manage an entire war effort,” Faen said at last.

“She doesn’t,” Dae said. “We’re going to manage four war efforts.”

Faen scowled while Ogma’s expression melted into confusion. Dae simply gestured towards the envelope.

“She cannot possibly be serious,” Faen whispered as he completed the missive.

“You might have impressed her a bit too much over the years,” Dae said.

“Oh no,” Faen said. “No, no you don’t. There is nothing of me in this madness. This is on your head!”

“I am possibly somewhat guilty as well,” Dae said. “But please note who bears the title of Supreme Commander of Gallagrin Forces.”

“She only gave that to me because she’s all but made Queen in her place already!” Faen’s face had turned an amusing shade of crimson.

“I don’t understand,” Ogma said, glancing back and forth between the two senior commanders in the room. “What has the Queen instructed us to do.”

“She’s asking us to sink the realm,” Faen said. “We’re supposed to do the impossible or watch everything fall apart.”

“He’s painting a bleaker picture than is actually the case, strictly speaking,” Dae said. “The Queen’s not asking us to do anything impossible. Just very very difficult.”

“She wants us to fight a war with the Green Council, Inchesso, Senkin and Paxmer all at once,” Faen said. “That’s not possible for any for any three armies combined, and you might not have noticed, but we don’t even have one army at the moment!”

“Our lack of an army is a challenge, I will admit that,” Dae said. “But none of this is insurmountable.”

“No offense Lady Akorli, but have you been drinking the same water and eating the same food as the queen,” Ogma asked.

“We’re not poisoned,” Dae said. “And we’re not crazy. The Queen made a solid case for why we need to fight those battles. Now we need your help to figure out how we can managed it.”

“Well, let’s see,” Faen said. “First we’ll need a magical squad of flying armored sky carriages that we can assemble here by tomorrow. Then we’ll need Wind Steeds that can fly for endless periods of time off the High Roads. Oh and they’ll need to be combat trained so that when the Green Council launches their aerial defenses our forces can fight back.”

“We don’t have any forces like that,” Ogma said. “Wind Steeds can’t carry things off the High Roads for long and armor cuts into their range too much.”

“If we had that though, could you pull off the reconnaissance missions?” Dae asked.

“Well, sure, give us the right tools and we can do anything,” Ogma said.

“Excellent,” Dae said. “Have your troops ready tomorrow morning then.”

Faen narrowed his eyes as disbelief etched glacial valleys into his brow. Dae watched as those valley melted away and Faen worked out what her plans were.

“Please tell me I’m wrong,” he said. “Please tell me you are not intending to request aid from a realm we are also planning to declare war on?”

“Ok, I am not planning to request aid from a realm we are planning to declare war on,” Dae said. “I am planning on requesting aid from my mother.”

“Who is the next best thing to the current Queen of Paxmer!” Faen said.

“She’s very specifically refused that title,” Dae said.

“I am somewhat lost here,” Ogma said. “What can Lady Akorli’s mother do for us and why are we declaring war on Paxmer?”

“We aren’t declaring war on Paxmer,” Dae said. “Nor are we declaring war on Senkin.”

“But we are preparing to fight on four fronts at once,” Faen said. “Which is suicidal.”

“I agree,” Dae said. “We can’t fight enemies on all sides. That doesn’t mean we can afford allow ourselves to be attacked from any side though.”

“I’m not sure I see the distinction between those two in practical terms,” Ogma said. “Where are we going to deploy our forces?”

“Only where we need to,” Dae said. “Which is why the scouting mission is one I will ask the Paxmer Dragon Regent to assist us with.”

“Has it occurred to you that if your mother lends us the use of Paxmer’s dragons, those monsters will be in perfect position to ravage our countryside when we declare war on Paxmer?” Faen asked.

“The Paxmer dragons still cannot abide our soul, or Inchesso’s,” Dae said. “We’re in no greater danger from them if we work together than if we remain separate. Less in fact, since if we’re working together we’ll know where they are.”

“How will the dragons be able to help us?” Ogma asked.

“You asked from battle carriages?” Dae said. “Dragons are substantially harder to shoot down than any war carriage ever made, and they can travel much farther.”

“How are we going to get down…” Ogma started to ask but cut herself off. “Pact wings. We’re going to send the scouts who are pact bonded in on the dragons. They can fly to ground and perform reconnaissance there!”

“Exactly,” Dae said.

“And how will we get them out again?” Faen asked.

“That’s what the army will be for,” Dae said.

“That’s courting disaster,” Faen said. “The scouts will be deep within hostile territory. No support. No supplies. Just themselves and for each one we lose, we’ll grow steadily less able to reach and help the others.”

“Sir Kemoral, you just described the exact situation the Scouting Corp trains for,” Ogma said. “We will have a challenging time managing the number of volunteers we’ll get for these missions.”

“Since when is the Scout Corp the crazy one?” Faen asked. “I thought the Breachers were supposed to be our near Berserker units?”

“No offense to your troops sir, but who do you think goes in before them and tells them where to go?” Ogma asked, a satisfied smile gracing her lips.

“Sleeping Gods preserve me,” Faen said, shaking his head. “Ok, so we might be able to make the Scout missions work. We still have the problem where we’re about to be invaded by the Green Council and our army is in a state of complete disarray.”

“We do have some difficulties to work out there,” Dae said. “The Royal Army needs to stay here in Highcrest. The nobles would revolt for their freedom without those swords nearby to remind them how vulnerable their necks are.”

“The Ducal forces are on formal lockdown in the home provinces,” Faen said. “So far fear of the Queen’s wrath have kept them in place, but in the face of an invasions, it’s difficult to say how they’ll react.”

“There is one other force we can call on,” Dae said.

“A commoner levy will be slaughtered,” Faen said. “Even if we could somehow arm them, they lack the training needed for a serious military venture and none of them would carry Pact spirits.”

“Queen Alari would never authorize a war levy for those very reasons,” Dae said. “But you’re forgetting about a standing military that is still loyal to the Queen.”

“The Dawns March?” Faen asked. “But they’re not common troops. They’re meant to keep the nobles in check, and they’re all specialists.”

“Special circumstances demand special troops,” Dae said.

“There aren’t enough of them though!” Faen said.

“Then we’ll have to work out a way to supplement their ranks,” Dae said. “We’ve got a half hour at least before the doors open, so let’s brainstorm how we’re going to produce four armies worth of troops when we can barely pull together a quarter of one at the moment.”

“Is it always like this?” Ogma asked.

Faen broke out a rare smile as he turned to the Scout Commander.

“No, no,” he said. “Usually it’s much worse.”

Eorn was pleased. People were pointing spears at her. Poisoned spears from the look of the oily green sheen on their wedge shaped heads. Hostility this early on meant that something had gone terribly wrong and she was going to get to release all the anxiety that had been welling up within her on the poor, likely underpaid, people who were babbling on in Western Inchesso.

“We are on a diplomatic mission from Her Majesty Queen Alari of Gallagrin,” Teo said in Western Inchesso. His tone and posture suggested boredom, but Eorn noticed that by slouching backwards he’d bought himself enough room that it would take the guards an extra quarter-second to reach him with their spears. A quarter second was barely more than the blink of an eye, but there was a lot that a vampire (or a Pact Knight) could do in that time.

Teo turned to Eorn and glanced at the spear tips that were thrust into their carriage.

“They seem to have issues with us being here,” he said in Gallagrin.

Eorn knew she was a provincial girl. She was proud of her family and her mixed blood heritage, but not unaware of how people looked at her family and the others who hailed from the high mountain crags. “Less cosmopolitan” meant “less educated” and “less intelligent” to a lot of people in Gallagrin. Eorn wasn’t sure how she matched up in terms of overall intelligence but she was smart enough that she’d never had a problem following the lessons of the various tutors her mother had brought into house. Tutors in history and math, language and warfare. Before letting her children out into the world, Eorn’s mother had armed them to the teeth in every manner she knew how, something Eorn had almost daily cause to be grateful for.

Speaking Western Inchesso was something she’d learned at an early age and excelled at, to the point where she could even mimic the accents of its more prominent sub-dialects. Letting people know that she spoke the language though seemed like giving away an advantage she had no need to relinquish under the circumstances.

“Step out of the carriage, with your hands raised,” the Lialarus family guard said.

“As it suits you,” Teo said in Western Inchesso, adding in Gallagrin to Eorn, “They want us to step out. You should be ready to put on your formal diplomatic wear.”

Eorn’s slight smile pulled back into a broad grin that exposed her canines. She was already wearing the official livery of the Gallagrin Queen’s Guard. If Teo, as the mission commander, was suggesting that she change into more official regalia, then he was not planning to go quietly with the people who were trying to arrest them.

Eorn nodded slowly in approval and gestured for Teo to allow her out first. She was along on the trip as protection for him. Allowing a nobleman’s husband to get skewered by the guards of a foreign would not reflect well on her service, even if he could survive it.

Teo shook his head though, and motioned for her to allow him to step out first. If he hadn’t been a vampire, Eorn might have refused, but since his fighting style probably relied on speed and movement, she acquiesced to his wish.

The guards pulled the spears out of the carriage, stepping back in time with Teo’s cautious, peaceful advance out into the light. As he did, the markings of his vampiric condition, the unusual cast of his skin and the unmistakable fangs revealed by smile became more visibly apparent and collective gasp for breath went out of the the Lialraus guards.

“Vampire!” a subcommander shouted.

“Switch to Inferno oil!” the commander barked.

It wasn’t the reception Eorn had expected but it was certainly one she was willing to answer in kind.

Eorn stepped out of the carriage as Teo shifted into fighting speed. Eorn took a fraction of a second to locate the combatants and register them on the mental model of the landing platform that she’d put together as they approached it.

“He’s attack…” the first guard began to say before Teo dropped him to the ground with an elbow strike that caught the guard right across the bridge of his nose. That was one target disabled. Plenty of others presented themselves though.

The landing platform was was an ornately decorated affair, as befit one of Inchesso’s prominent families. There were tall marble columns arranged in a broad circle on the raised pedestal of the platform. Each was etched with either overlapping geometric shapes or intricately carved scenes sculpted in bas-relief, with the markings holding a variety of low grade enchantments.

Atop the pillars, a flat ring of similar stone acted as the anchor point for several varieties of green and purple vines that hung like a sparse curtain around the platform. Seeing the cover the vines provided, Eorn doubled her estimate for the number of guards that they were likely facing.

The shock of Teo’s attack was just wearing off as Eorn finished cataloguing where their attackers were situated around the platform. Six were arrayed immediately around them. Three others were taking aim from the cover of the vines and, unless she missed her guess, there were at least two more who were approaching the other side of the royal carriage  with the intent to flank Teo and Eorn.

It wasn’t a horrible arrangement for the Inchesso forces, but Eorn could see the gaps in their thinking. They weren’t used to fighting foes with greater mobility than themselves or enemies that couldn’t be rendered unconscious by a whiff of sleep toxin. They were grouped too close together and the nearer ones were obstructing the sight lines of the archers waiting beyond the vines. Seeing that gave her a plan.

Step one was to let out a Bear Cry. It wasn’t strictly speaking magic. Anyone with the right lung capacity and training could manage it. The depth and volume of the cry seemed inhuman to the Inchesso troops though, as Eorn had guessed it would, and it focused all of their attention on her, as she’d hoped it would.

Step two was to begin her transformation. That further cemented the Inchesso guards attention on her, which allowed Teo to drop another one who’d lost focus on the vampire as a more immediate problem.

Transforming allowed Eorn to brush aside the expected volley of attacks the Inchesso guards both near and far launched at her. She was please that part of the strategy worked out well. Transforming demanded a lot of her attention since she’d yet to master it to the level Lady Akorli had or even Vice Commander Lafli.

The Inchesso guards were notably less pleased with the results though. Fighting an enemy you got the drop on and outnumbered was supposed to be a nearly pain free affair. Two of them were unconscious already though, and three of them were stumbling away with wounds, arrows, or both that had been meant for Eorn.

Those were the lucky ones.

The rest got to face Eorn in her full war form, and a Teo who was in the mood to make an example of someone.

Eorn crashed through them like thunder. The platform trembled as she stomped into two spear thrusts, shattering their shafts and blunting their tips against her Pact armor. One guard reacted to being disarmed by fumbling for their sword while the other decided that grappling a giant armor covered warrior was the brightest idea he could come up with.

The guard managed to wrap his hands around Eorn’s throat but even slightly denting her armor was a feat far beyond his capacity.

Or it should have been.

Eorn felt an inhuman amount of pressure gathering under the guard’s grip. Looking into his eyes she saw that they’d filmed over with a red liquid that glowed in exactly the manner that blood doesn’t. She couldn’t smell the guard’s breath but she was certain if she could, she’d be gagging on the stench of bile mixed with viscera and, oddly, cinnamon.

Where Gallagrin had the magic of Pact Binding, Inchesso was famed for its alchemical capabilities. Enhancing troops strength through the use of magical potions was considered common practice, though from everything Eorn had learned the potion enhancements were highly variable based on the skill of the potion maker.

From what she could tell the Lialarus family alchemist was quite talented though. Berserking potions were a common enough item, but in most cases they offered no more than an exchange of intelligence and reasoning for speed and strength. The Lialarus guards seemed to gain strength, speed and aggression with little cost.

That made extracting herself from the guards grasp more troublesome for Eorn. Picking him up and body slamming him to the ground failed to knock the fight out of him. Slamming him into one of the pillars similarly left him with some fight still in him. Even beating another of the guards unconscious with him didn’t dissuade the berserking guard from struggling to continue the fight.

So she threw him off the platform, hurling him down to the estate grounds twenty feet below and breaking both his legs.

“Never go berserk,” she said. “It never helps.”

On the platform, Teo was moving in a blur. He wasn’t killing any of the guards, but he wasn’t being remotely kind to the either. The vampire clearly had some anxiety of his own that he needed to work out. Watch the carnage, Eorn felt compelled to add, “Well, almost never.”

The last of the guards had fallen and Teo and Eorn had regained their breath by the time the next group from the Lialarus family marched up the long stone steps that led to the landing platform. Eorn hadn’t released her transformation, but seeing the new party arrived, she guessed she wasn’t going to need it.

“Oh no, the Gallagrin terrorists have overcome our guards and we are at their mercy,” the elderly Inchesso woman at the head of the delegation said without trace of concern in her voice. It took a moment before Eorn noticed that she’d spoken in perfect, unaccented Gallagrin.

“I assure you Eldest Lialarus, we are not terrorists,” Teo said, adding the polite inflections to his Western Inchesso.

“Oh of course you are,” Eldest Lialarus said. “Now come inside, there are too many snooping insects out here.”

She then turned and led the party of Lialarus retainers back down the steps they’d just ascended.

Eorn looked at Teo who appeared to be as baffled as she was. He shrugged and started to follow the welcoming party that hadn’t tried to kill them yet. Eorn fell into step with him, perplexed at the change in demeanor between the two greeting parties.

At the bottom of the landing platform steps, the Wind Steed stables lay, mostly empty except for a few mares which Eorn guessed to be the family’s personal steeds.

A party had already been dispatch to help the guard Eorn had thrown off the platform, and she saw a small group of medics waiting patiently near the stairs. Once she and Teo had followed the Eldest’s party far enough away, the medic scampered up the stairs to tend to the wounded on the platform.

Eldest Lialarus led them into the grand domicile and while it didn’t hold a candle to the spacious grandeur of the Gallagrin Royal Palace, it did remind Eorn of how simple her own upbringing was.

Her family was noble, but in their small, independently minded province that didn’t count for much. With the Lialarus family it was clear how much they valued power and wealth and how far above their subjects they held themselves.

“So,” Eldest Lialarus asked as she escorted them into a small receiving room. “What does my favorite queen of the Realms have for House Lialarus today?”

Teo smiled.

“This,” he said, producing a scroll from within his tunic. It was sealed with Alari’s personal signet. “We’ve come to talk about war. Specifically that Gallagrin will be declaring war on Inchesso within three days.”

Teo didn’t want to set foot in his homeland again. The political alliances that were arrayed against him as a child had shifted endlessly over the decades since he had last been in Inchesso, but he knew that there was one certainty he could rely on; people were going to hate him.

It wouldn’t be a personal hate. Not at first anyways. His years as an expatriate and his marriage into a Gallagrin noble family marked him as an outsider, and it was not in the Inchesso character to trust outsiders. At least not when it came to Inchesso nobles that is. Especially not the Inchesso nobles he was flying to met with.

“Do you speak their language?” Eorn asked. She had been silent for most of the trip, but the worry lines that creased her brow spoke volumes.

“I’m passable at the Traveller’s dialect,” Teo said. “I knew the Western Noble’s tongue when I was young, but I lost it years ago.”

“I don’t understand why Inchesso has so many languages,” Eorn said. “Gallagrin gets by just fine with one.”

“It makes it easier to hate each other when the Great Families can disagree on what basic words mean,” Teo said.

“Why waste their efforts on that?” Eorn asked. “Wouldn’t it make them more powerful if they worked together?”

“I’m not sure,” Teo said. “Perhaps you can ask that question to the Gallagrin nobles that our queen has locked up in her castle?”

“If Queen Alari was an Inchesso queen, the nobles would be locked up at the bottom of a river,” Eorn said.

“That’s the sort of tale other nations love to concoct about the Inchesso,” Teo said. “If the Inchesso nobles were as murderous as that though, nothing would ever get done.”

“I thought that’s what Inchesso’s problem was,” Eorn said. “It’s falling apart because nothing is done to care for it.”

“That’s how things appear, but Inchesso’s state is more complex than that,” Teo said. “Subterfuge is as much as part of courtly life as the air the nobles breath. There is value in appearing decayed and weak, both internally and to the other realms.”

“Appearing weak seems like an invitation for other nations to invade and destroy you at this point,” Eorn said.

“That is the general belief, and yet few serious attempts have been made to contest Inchesso’s sovereignty,” Teo said.

Below them the fens of western Inchesso faded into the cragged hills that surrounded Oloma, the capital city of the Lialarus family they were traveling to visit. It wouldn’t be long before their unannounced visit, potentially, became the worst diplomatic incident in either nation’s history.

“Gallgrin’s always had Paxmer to worry about hasn’t it?” Eorn said.

“Paxmer’s always been a concern but there were stretches of time where the two realms were peaceful enough that an assault on Inchesso could have been viable,” Teo said.

“What stopped that from happening?” Eorn asked.

“The consensus seems to be that everyone knows Inchesso is faking the amount of weakness and decay it’s afflicted with,” Teo said. “Hiding your strength is so common here that no one is able to get a good read on what sort of resources any of the families actually possess. The only constant is that whenever Inchesso’s defenses are seriously probed, the ones responsible suffer losses far in excess of any damage they inflict.”

“So none of the other realms are brave enough to engage Inchesso openly?” Eorn asked.

“Engaging Inchesso openly has never been a recipe for success,” Teo said. “Among the Inchesso elite, dealing plainly is the sign of an imbecile or a child. They place no value in a verbal agreement and will commit to written deals only with members of their own family.”

“How can a realm run like that?” Eorn asked.

“Much the same as any other,” Teo said. “Negotiations only work if both sides think they’re getting something they desire and the agreements last until one party or the other believes they can get a better deal elsewhere.”

“It seems like madness,” Eorn said, frowning but looking better for having something to take her mind off her other worries.

“It is,” Teo said, amused by the giant woman’s take on international politics. The Bromli family that Eorn hailed from was not one of the more cosmopolitan of Gallagrin’s noble houses, and apparently had few dealings abroad.

“Are we going to be able to negotiate with them?” Eorn asked. “If we can’t trust anything they say, how will we ever reach an agreement with them that has any substance?”

“You raise an excellent question,” Teo said. “It’s one I wish we could have raised with Queen Alari before she assigned this task to us.”

“You spoke with her in private after the general meeting,” Eorn said. “Didn’t she provide you with any further details to make this meeting a success?”

“The Queen is very trusting in my skills,” Teo said. “I have no idea why that would be the case though. I have never done anything like this in my life.”

“Why send you then? She had to give you some reason, didn’t she?”

“She said it was because she could trust me,” Teo said.

“Have you worked with her before?” Eorn asked.

“Only once, last fall, during the debacle with the Consort-King,” Teo said.

“Apparently you left an impression,” Eorn said. “I don’t understand why she didn’t send one of the castle’s ambassadors though? I mean there already are ones in residence in Inchesso aren’t there?”

“The current crop of ambassadors to Inchesso are long term appointees,” Teo said. “They’ve been there since King Sathe’s reign.”

“Why didn’t the Queen replace them?” Eorn said.

“Because they have experience in Inchesso which no one else possesses,” Teo said. “The result of which is that they’re more affiliated with Inchesso than they are with Paxmer these days. The Queen expressed her regrets over that but she’s had too many other important things on her agenda to fight that particular battle. At least until today.”

“Will one of the ambassadors be waiting for us when we land?” Eorn asked.

“No, there are none attached to the Lialarus family,” Teo said. “Which is one of the reasons we’re meeting with them.”

“How important of a family are they?” Eorn asked.

“They’re power has been waxing for several years now and was bolstered last year with the loss of one of their princes,” Teo said.

“How did that work?” Eorn asked.

“In reparation  for the prince’s murder, the Queen sent the majority of the Consort-King’s body to the Lialarus family,” Teo said.

“How did sending a King’s corpse repay making their son into a corpse?” Eorn asked.

“Partially it was a matter of justice,” Teo said. “Halrek was ultimately one of the ones responsible for Prince Lorenzo’s murder. More importantly though, noble corpses are of tremendous value for a variety of rare and powerful alchemical extractions.”

“So they turned Halrek’s body into what then?” Eorn asked.

“That’s the delightful thing,” Teo said. “No one knows. They could have created all sorts of hideous brews but it’s an open question of which ones they chose to possess.”

“Does that make them our allies, or very dangerous associates?” Eorn asked.

“More the latter than the former,” Teo said. “By the end of our discussion they may even prove to be out enemies.”

“That would be unfortunate I take it?” Eorn said.

“On a wide variety of fronts, yes,” Teo said.

“So how are we going to make the right first impression?” Eorn asked.

“Patience,” Teo said. “They’ll want to go through hours of formal greetings and rituals. We’ll probably have to survive at least three meals in the process. In the end though, once they’ve confirmed that we’re legitimate ambassadors from Gallagrin and have a sense that we’ve come to treat with them on serious matters, we’ll be granted an audience with whatever members of the family’s Elites are in residence.”

“What do you mean by ‘survive three meals’?” Eorn asked.

“They’ll try to poison us,” Teo said. “It would be poor manners for them not to.”

“I thought you said Inchesso’s lethal reputation was overstated?” Eorn said.

“It is. The most likely poison they’ll administer will be a suggestibility draught,” Teo said. “Expect all of the wine they offer to be laced with it. The more effective psychoactive mixtures will be applied to the food, or misted into the air though.

“They violate the laws of hospitality so freely?” Eorn asked.

“From the Inchesso view, anyone who doesn’t expect to be poisoned when visiting strangers needs to be taught an object lesson. In attempting to poison us, they’ll be acknowledging that we hold enough power to be worth trying to weaken or suborn while at the same time bowing to the reality that we’re strong enough to defend ourselves,” Teo said. “Also the mixtures aren’t entirely harmful. The suggestibility draught for example is said to grant the imbiber the most restful sleep they can possibly achieve.”

“While that sounds nice, is it true that we’re strong enough to defend ourselves? I mean, you’re immune to poison because you’re a vampire, correct?” Eorn asked.

“I am, similar to how you are granted immunity through your Pact bond,” Teo said.

“Pact Knights are more resistant to poison than immune,” Eorn said. “Queen Alari made sure to impress that distinction on us when we became Guardians.”

“We being yourself and the thin young man you’ve spent the flight worrying about?” Teo asked.

“Undine can take care of himself,” Eorn said. “He’s overcome a lot already.”

“But you’re still worried about him,” Teo said. “I know the feeling. Ren’s more capable that he’s ever been and yet I keep envisioning how this could all go terribly wrong for him.”

Eorn joined Teo in a rueful frown.

“I just wish I could help him,” Eorn said.

“Take heart,” Teo said. “If things go as well as I expect them to, we’ll probably be the ones who are in need of help, so maybe they can come to our rescue.”

Eorn laughed at that.

“Oh Sleeping Gods, I can just imagine,” she said. “Undine would do the stupidest things.”

“Not the stupidest, those would be reserved for my Ren,” Teo said. “I swear since he got his Pact spirit, he’s been getting progressively more foolish.”

“It can be hard to resist trying out the spirit’s powers,” Eorn said. “I was a little undisciplined when I was first bonded too.”

“I understand the excitability of youth, but sadly I never got to enjoy the same kind of wild and uninhibited phase that Pact bearers go through,” Teo said.

“I thought vampires had all sorts of amazing powers?” Eorn asked.

“We do,” Teo said. “But since, in my case, those powers tax my strength and my strength comes from the blood of the one I love, I’ve never been inclined to use them with abandon.”

“Will you be able to protect yourself from the poison?” Eorn asked.

“Easily,” Teo said. “That’s barely even requires magic since my physiology is so different from my original human state. Most of the compounds that will harm, incapacitate or influence a human are essentially inert in my body. I can combat the ones that do pose a threat with little effort, unless of course they target vampiric blood directly. Encountering one of those would be problematic.”

“That would be a somewhat exotic thing for the Inchesso to have on hand wouldn’t it?” Eorn asked.

“Yes, the mixtures are somewhat exotic,” Teo said. “I would guess the Lialarus family wouldn’t be likely to have more than a few casks of the proper draughts on the premises at the moment.”

“A few casks?” Eorn asked.

“There aren’t many organized undead in Inchesso, but the blood ravaging poisons are useful against more than just vampires,” Teo said.

“So either or both of us could die here?” Eorn said, as the sky carriage they were traveling in began its descent towards the platform at the Lialarus family estate.

“That’s the most important thing to remember when working in Inchesso,” Teo said. “Even if you are sure that you’re safe, be aware that you’re not.”

“I feel like I should be in my armored form already,” Eorn said as they touched down with the gentle grace that only a royal issue carriage could manage.

“Oh there’s no need for that,” Teo said. “I’m speaking in broad strokes. While we’re with the Lialarus family, we should be as safe as we were in Gallagrin. The worst threat before us will be the tedium of all the flowery greetings and silly compliments.”

Inchesso guards opened the doors on both sides of the carriage, brandishing spears that gleamed with a reflective green oil that sizzled on their tips.

“Gallagrin intruders, you are under arrest in the name of the Eldest Lialarus. Surrender your arms and come quietly.”

Alari felt a tingle of delight ripple from her fingers down to her toes. The Green Council’s army lay decimated before her. She’d shoved their toxic defenses back a mile into the territory they’d taken, and she had the key to converting their Warbringers her to do her bidding. It felt so good to not hold back any longer.

“You shouldn’t smile so much,” Haldri said. “People will begin to think you’re enjoying this.”

“People would not be incorrect,” Alari said. “But your point is a valid one. There is still much to do here, and many who are injured or worse.”

Limiting herself to formal Gallagrin speech was irksome. Alari had learned imaginative profanities for all sorts of occasions from Dae. Dae’s repertoire had even included a number of celebratory blasphemes which Alari was toe curlingly eager to use given the circumstances.

With a sigh, she composed herself though. She was the Queen of Gallagrin. Displays of power aside, she needed to maintain the proper facade to remind people of that at all times.

“The Council will not be happy that you are suborning its resources I think,” Haldri said, glancing at the giant Warbringer that stood at attention awaiting Alari’s orders.

It was that change, even more than her arrival on the battlefield and subsequent disruption of the conflict via tornado-class winds, which had halted the Green Council’s advance. The Council was willing to match its strength against her, rightfully, but was hesitant at allowing her steal the forces it had deployed against Senkin.

It was a shame. Alari was impressed with the size and power of the Warbringers. Stealing a small army of them would make dealing with a certain subset of her nobles much easier.

“We suspect you are correct about the Council’s feelings,” Alari said. “These devices are exceptional creations. The Green Council really should have taken better care of them.”

“Devices?” Haldri said. “So they are not intelligent creatures in their own right?”

“They do not seem to be,” Alari said. “The modified transformation mist I exposed this one to would not have controlled the mind of a sentient creature. It only redirected the flow of its magics so that they originate from land beneath it instead of the Green Council.”

“And it is loyal to you for this new freedom?” Haldri asked.

“It has no loyalty,” Alari said. “Whatever Guiding Will once directed its actions, their command of the device seems to have been severed when its energy source changed.”

“I see why the rest of the Council’s forces have pulled back,” Haldri said. “They will not remain disengaged for long though.”

“You believe they will attack again once their courage returns?” Alari asked. “Or you believe that they have a weapon they can deploy to counter our strength?”

“Most likely both,” Haldri said. “The Council has been ready for this war for a long time. They have doubtless taken Gallagrin’s interference into account as well.”

“They have made a mistake though,” Alari said. “Haven’t they.”

Neither Alari nor Haldri were privy to the inner workings of the Green Council, neither knew the hidden agenda of its members, but each step the Council took revealed details of its true intentions.

The simplest example of this was the speed with which the Green Council launched its attack. The Blessed Realms lived in harmony and peace with one another. This was by Divine Decree. Even when the Sleeping Gods were awake the level of observable peace and harmony between the realms was not always particularly large though. There were natural barriers and divine constructions which helped keep the worst of the inter-realm animosity under control and times of actual warfare between realms were rare as a result.

Gallagrin and Paxmer were typical in this regards, where the sharp peaks between them limited battles to scuffles over border resources and bloodshed in the name of honor or glory. Neither realm made serious attempts at conquest of the other until the time of Alari’s father, and neither made any real progress in the attempt until Alari and Haldri’s final feud.

Unlike Gallagrin and Paxmer though, Senkin and the Green Council had been distinctly peaceful allies. Their border was free of any divinely erected dividers to segment the realms. In place of physical barriers though, there were social walls that grew taller with the passage of time. The two societies were alien enough to each other that both sides found the other primitive and unappealing to associate with, so they stuck to their own sphere.

All of that meant that neither had any reason to maintain the sort of army which could invade the other. Military forces to deal with marauding monsters were one thing. All of the realms possessed those, but an army that was draw together enough to present an undeniable threat to a neighboring realm? That required planning and coordination, which in turn revealed intent.

There wasn’t time to raise an army the likes of which the Green Council had raised, with specialized supplies and a surplus of extremely powerful units, in the month since the conquest of Paxmer. The forces which Alari faced therefor were prepared and placed over the space of the winter in all likelihood.

Or in other words, the Green Council had observed how the events had played out with the Consort-King Halrek the previous autumn, and had learned of Alari’s response to Paxmer then. They’d seen the tides of war swelling and had wagered that the edicts of the Sleeping Gods would be tested by the conflict. They weren’t the only realm to notice that, just the one most prepared to act on it, from what Alari could see.

“Yes, they’ve made the same mistake I did, I believe,” Haldri said. “They think you crave dominion over them and will fight to take the power they possess. They’re going to marshall their forces against you, but you’re not going to be here are you?”

“Though our enemy you be still, we could ask for no sharper advisor,” Alari said. “You mind is all edges of a blade, brilliant from every angle.”

Alari meant both the compliment and the implied challenge in her words. Haldri was no longer queen, but her true power hadn’t been her command of the Dragon King Haldraxan. She was keenly intelligent and more observant than almost anyone Alari knew. Since her fall from power, the expression of that intelligence had begun to change, as though being cast down had given Haldri perspectives she’d long been missing to fill in the gaps in her awareness.

That didn’t make the former Queen of Paxmer less dangerous, or any kinder, but wisdom was a tempering force all on its own. It was the sum of that which gave Alari hope, but she was keenly aware of the other side of that knife edge, where opportunity and stored resentment could combine in Haldri to deadly effect. Alari’s spoken observation was therefor as much recognition of Haldri’s capabilities as it was a warning that Alari was ready for them.

“It appears the Senkin forces are as stunned as the Council’s,” Haldri said.

Behind them, the Senkin troops who had been in full retreat were paused and silent. They had been chased by dire plant abominations that looked like they stepped out of a nightmare. In place of the monsters two women stood before them, and the monsters seemed hesitant to move forward. Discretion easily overwhelmed valor in that situation as even the bravest in the Senkin forces chose to wait a few moments and take stock of the new arrival on the battlefield.

The only ones who were still in motion were the medics. The violence with which Alari scattered the Council’s forces had not left the Senkin troops entirely unscathed either. Troops and equipment had been blown around the battlefield and there were still plenty of wounded to care for.

“It’s difficult to blame the Senkins for feeling out of their depth,” Alari said. “They have no training for scenarios like this and, it seems, no leadership who are up to the task of devising successful strategies against a foe who presses attacks of this scale against them.”

“It seems fair to blame them for failing to meet the challenge which they were trained for in the general case,” Haldri said. “An aggressor seeks to claim their territory. There is complexity in how the answer to that threat is phrased but even with their greater might and coordination, the Council’s forces are not all that different from the monsters the Senkin fight routinely.”

“We are glad that you feel such sentiments,” Alari said, delighted to see a look of surprise flicker across Haldri’s face.

“I thought you held kinder hopes for the Senkins,” Haldri said, speaking to what she knew Alari was going to say next rather than responding to what she’d already said.

“On the turn of this moment, there is but one kindness we can bestow on the Senkin,” Alari said. “Though we imagine you already know of what we speak.”

“I am not sure that I do,” Haldri said, surprise still wrinkling her features.

“Time races away from us, so we shall be brief,” Alari said. “We shall depart this field, but you shall remain.”

“You give me my freedom now? Here?” Haldri said.

“No, you remain our prisoner by right of conquest,” Alari said.

“And what cage will you place me in to keep me so?” Haldri asked.

“You needed be caged to rightfully be our prisoner,” Alari said. “That is the only the legal truth though. In practice, your prison is this conflict.”

“And why by all the Sleeping Gods would this open plain serve to hold me in?” Haldri asked. “I have never held concern for either realm on this field. They were ever your neighbors and of little interest to Paxmer.”

“The Senkin need a leader,” Alari said.

There were many more reasons why she’d chosen Haldri for that role, but they went unvoiced. Alari didn’t need to tell Haldri that there was no one else she could give the task to, no one who held the necessary mix of cunning and charisma matched with experience in leading large groups of people.

She didn’t need to tell Haldri that Senkin and the Green Council were in every measure just as much prisons as Gallagrin was. As the former queen of Paxmer, Haldri was too valuable (and dangerous) a piece in the grand game to be allowed any liberty. The Queen of Senkin knew that Haldri was in her country and would not allow such a powerful bargaining chip to either escape or take up a quiet life hidden away somewhere.

Flight into the Green Council’s lands would be even more perilous. If they discovered Paxmer’s former queen in their lands, their most likely response would be to render her down to parts and sell those pieces immediately to the potion makers in Inchesso. Anything else meant risking playing into the kind of deep schemes which nobles can afford to spend a lifetime crafting.

By arriving with Alari, Haldri had been placed in support of the Senkin by association. Her best hope for survival lay in taking command of the local army and guiding them to victory. If nothing else that could earn her the loyalty of the troops she fought with, and at best would force Senkin’s Queen to bestow her royal approval on Haldri’s presence.

There were deeper reasons Alari had chosen this assignment for Haldri, but she believed they might have escaped the Dragon Queen. If so it wouldn’t be surprising as they were founded on little more than the fairydust of hopes and dreams. In some things the Gallagrin Pact Spirit could offer unconscious nudging from its vast wisdom, but the spirit had never seen a king or queen attempt what Alari was trying so it had no guidance to offer her.

The gaze Haldri leveled at Alari was not a happy one, but there was a resignation to it.

“I thought you were kinder than this?” Haldri asked and Alari knew she wasn’t referring to the fact that Alari was abandoning her. She was speaking of what she would be able to do to the Senkin troops.

“Perhaps it was not our kindness you were seeing,” Alari said. She didn’t place a hand on Haldri’s shoulder. Their relationship was not one that admitted such gestures.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Haldri asked.

“Yes,” Alari said. “This Warbringer was in charge of the rest. We will use it to find the Green Council commander who directed this operation and have words with them.”

“The Green Council forces may not allow that,” Haldri said.

“Then you will be able to defend Senkin very easily,” Alari said and turned from the Dragon Queen to march into the maw of the largest army the Green Council had ever assembled.

Iana wasn’t afraid. With the crash and chaos of battle exploding around her, she had no song in her heart except for exhilaration. This was her day.

She’d trained with her troops for as many years as she could remember. The Council had singled her out for command from before she knew what commanding an army of Warbringers meant. All of the things she’d done in preparation, the long days working to understand her Warbringer, the longer days learning to understand those assigned to her. Discovering how to motivate people, how to keep her troops focused even when she was lost and unsure of what to do. All of that had been in preparation for the moment that was before her.

The Senkin opposition to her troops’ advance was fierce. The fighting was harder than any battle against the monsters of the Lost Glades. Senkin’s military fought with power and precision, they fought without mercy or hesitation, they gave it their all but despite that the Warbringers were winning!

Iana felt like her spirit was glowing with a light bright enough to cast shadows on the sun. She wasn’t just fighting, she was orchestrating. In her mind, the battlefront was one giant, multi-layered song. Discord threatened at every moment to shatter the anthem of victory that Iana was playing, but with each step forward she kept herself and those she directed singing a clear harmony. Thrusts against them became dramatic pauses in the music or dips into a minor key, only for the crescendo surge of her forces advancing again to stir her soul to greater heights of rapture.

In all the days she’d fought the monsters that gathered within the Green Council’s borders, Iana had always wondered what it would be like to face an equal foe. Or at least someone with the same level of resources and training and organization that her forces possessed. She’d lain awake after a long days of training, letting visions of what a real war would look like dance through her head. Would she be fast enough? Would she be smart enough? Could she protect the people she had to protect? How strong was she, really?

Strong enough it turned out.

A Warbringer lost its legs to a massed barrage of solar flares from the Senkin troops but before it hit the ground another Warbringer was at its side. The second Warbringer used the opening in the Senkin lines created by the Senkin attack to launch deadly, barbed whips into their midst. It was a spontaneous moment, the Warbringers acting in response to commands Iana had given them seconds earlier, but it played out like a maneuver they’d spent weeks rehearsing.

Without shields for protection, the attacking unit of Senkin soldiers disappeared in a shower of blood, just as the crippled Warbringer rose on new legs, striding forward into the gap in the Senkin ranks to to wreak more havoc on their numbers.

Iana saw both the ebb and flow of her troops power and called for feints and pushes, attacks and regroupings with such natural ease that it felt like she was fighting two battles at once.

Almost automatically, her Warbringer tore through the battlefield, shielding the seed pods that both destroyed Senkin’s control over the land and gave the Warbringers an inexhaustible well of power to draw on.

Above that battle though, another raged, one in which Iana wielded her troops with a single vision against the Senkin troops. The armies weren’t a collection of individuals but rather two vast fighters who danced slowly and gracefully around one another. Each struck with terrible force, but each was resilient beyond measure too.

When Iana sent a Warbringer to flank to the Senkin army’s north side it was as though she was probing her enemy’s defenses with a poisoned needle. A long Warbringer couldn’t do that much damage, but Senkin had to respond to the strike or else the poison of having a Warbringer cutting through their ranks would rot the formation from the inside out.

As the Senkin troops swarmed around the Warbringer, pinning it in place and burning out huge sections of its structure, a new opening was created in the Senkin defense, like a fighter parrying a low blow at the cost of leaving their head exposed. Iana jumped on that opening, sending in two of her Warbringers. She knew it wasn’t a true opening though and had two more Warbringers prepared to help draw fire from the ones she extended into Senkin’s weakened ranks.

The Senkin army’s shields and fire drove off the first two Warbringers but their efforts weren’t wasted. Other areas of the battle were shifting in response to the damage they inflicted, the Senkin troops falling back to regroup and bring their wounded farther from the fray.

Iana felt drunk with the power that coursed through her. She couldn’t believe how everything she’d been told about the Green Council’s inherent superiority was proving to be true.

Her earlier thoughts of rebellion were washed away by the tide of their impending victory. The Council had been right. By allowing the initial Senkin troops to escape, the force that had been marshalled to oppose them had been gathered too quickly. The Senkin army was a powerful fighting force, but the Council had fielded a more powerful one.

On their own the Warbringers wouldn’t have been enough. Even so mighty a collection of engines of destruction couldn’t defeat a greater number of enemies with similarly strong magics to draw on.  

That was why the Council had sent support.

The yellow fog was one of the deep magics the Council had discovered while the other realms were busy playing their little games. The opaque gas acted as a deadly toxin for the Mindful Races who encountered it, while at the same time providing fuel and power to the Warbringers.

Iana’s Warbringer and all of the rest weren’t operating at full power. They were processing well over the maximum amount of magic that any Warbringer could store.

Behind them, concealed and protected by the wall of yellow fog, the Green Council’s support troops labored. They had simple jobs. Prepare the Conquest Seeds. Load them into the Grand Catapults and keep firing them to where the Warbringers were or where they needed to advance to. Other support casters kept the fog wall advancing, claiming Senkin territory and providing the option of a refuge which Iana’s forces hadn’t needed to use yet.

Those and hundreds of other roles were part of the chorus that sang in Iana’s head and, in the heat of the battle, she loved every voice among them. She was with her people. They were in perfect unity. And they were winning.

Then a force from the sky struck the land and everything shattered into madness.

Iana was nearby, but not the closest to the impact site. Despite the vast weight of her Warbringer and the many enormous feet it stood on, she felt it being flung to the ground like a boneless doll.

The fall disoriented her for a pair of long seconds and by the time she rose a hush had fallen over the battlefield.

At the center of the impact crater stood a woman with wings of azure and sapphire and rose and silver radiating from her back.

Behind her stood a taller, older woman who gazed on the scene before her with the kind of disaffected, regal dignity that made Iana think of the eldest on the Green Council.

The winged woman, a native of Gallagrin based on her coloration and features, surveyed the landscape around her, focusing on the Green Council’s forces.

Iana felt fear creep into her heart, followed by rage. Her forces had been winning. They’d been moving in such powerful harmony and this new arrival had disrupted that? Iana wasn’t going to let that happen.

As quick as she could imagine it, her troops began converging on the new combatant. Iana knew she needed to wipe the winged woman off the board as quickly as possible.

It might even be the final winning play if she could defeat the winged woman and her companion. Surely, she reasoned, this was Senkin’s military pulling out its most powerful warrior as a weapon of last resort? If the winged woman fell then the rest of Senkin’s army might at last understand how outmatched they were and surrender without further fighting. That didn’t feel right but it was all Iana had to go on, so she clung to the idea.

The first Warbringer to make it to the winged woman shot a dozen razor sharp, briarthorn vines out when it was thirty feet away from her.

The winged woman caught the vines.

Then she pulled the Warbringer off its feet and sent it sailing through the air towards her.

As the giant plant monster fell on the winged woman Iana thought their job might be complete with the sacrifice of only one unit.

Then the winged woman punched it.

It was comical to watch. The woman appeared tiny next to the vast bulk of the Warbinger that was falling on her. The next moment though the Warbringer was nothing more than a pile of disconnected kindling twigs, each no larger than a toddler’s index finger.

Iana couldn’t process that for a moment.

One of her Warbringers was gone.

Destroyed in an instant.

Her mind was both frozen in silence and screaming in terror. Her orders sounded hollow and angry to her ears as she directed three other Warbringers to converge on her position as she raced to engage the winged woman as fast as a Warbringer’s colossal gait would allow.

Before they could reach the winged woman though, Iana saw her draw back her wings and take in a deep breath. It looked comical again, but Iana had no desire to laugh.

When the wings came forward something beyond wind came with them.

Air shouldn’t be able to lift wood and vines and water, not on the scale of a Warbringer, but this gale did. Tornado force winds a mile wide slammed into Iana and the rest of her troops blasting them backwards, head over heals.

Behind Iana, the fog curtain was driven back over a mile, revealing the support workers and the Senkin fort they were encamped around. They were exposed and vulnerable where a moment earlier they’d been in no danger at all.

Iana struggled to get her Warbringer to its feet again.

Whatever had landed on their battlefield, it couldn’t be a part of the Senkin army. Nothing could be that strong.

For a horrible moment, a sick idea occurred to Iana.

One of the Sleeping Gods had woken.

That didn’t seem possible and, if it was, Iana didn’t want any part of a quarrel between the gods.

“Now that we have some breathing room, perhaps they will listen to us?” the winged woman said to her companion.

“Their power is not yet spent,” the older woman said. “They will fight because they believe their reserves are not yet depleted.”

Iana wasn’t sure how the Sleeping Gods spoke, but that didn’t sound like what it should be. The older woman was right though. There was still fight left in Iana and her troops. This was her day even if it meant she had to fight the gods themselves to win it!

Alone, she charged forward, quick roots digging deeper into the soil of the converted land than any of her troops could have managed.

She’d built up a massive charge, torn from the newly converted land, by the time she reached the winged woman and she brought that force to bear in one mountain shattering blow.

The winged woman responded by lightly holding up her hand to catch Iana’s crushing attack. The impact fractured the Warbringer’s hand and arm, but the Winged Women didn’t move or flinch in the slightest.

“What is it that drives you?” she asked and pulled Iana’s  Warbringer off balance again to crash down face first. Before Iana could rise, the winged woman laid her hands on on the Warbringer’s back and tore it open.

The excess of magic the Warbringer stored burst forth in a surge of yellow fog. Yellow fog which the winged woman inhaled completely.

Iana watched the woman’s eyes shimmer for a moment, appearing like pools of silver rather than any living eyes that ever existed.

When the winged woman spoke a moment later, wisps of blue mist escaped her mouth.

“The Council’s been playing in our domain,” she said with a delighted smile. “Transformation belongs to us, not them. Not the brightest move on their part was it?”

Then she breathed forth more of the blue mist and Iana felt her control over the Warbringer go numb and freeze away completely.

With the last of her connection to it, Iana watched as the winged woman directed the Warbringer to stand and serve its new master rather than the Green Council.