Bonus Short Stories
The Warmaiden’s Rival
Blood-mist hung thick enough to blind. Stagnant air pricked at Aura’s nostrils, overwhelming her sense of smell. Where there had once been roars, there were now screams, a hopeless chorus rising to the sky in an unending lament. Yet for all the horror around her, she felt no fear. Despair had no hold on her. She walked straight ahead, forging on undeterred.
“Send two hundred reserves to reinforce the right flank,” she said to the aide at her side. “Don’t let a single soldier escape.”
She drew the spirit weapon at her belt. The blade gleamed in the sunlight, ripples of light traversing its length as if to extol its sharpness.
“Now they’re surrounded.”
She nodded to herself, satisfied that the battle had taken the course she had planned. Her aides, arrayed around her in an honor guard, looked at her with pride. She almost scolded them for letting their smooth progress go to their heads, but thought better of it. They would doubtless take her warning to heart, but it would make them self-conscious, and that would be counterproductive. They had to reach these realizations for themselves if they were to grow. If possible, she would have liked them to experience defeat rather than glory, but it would be better to avoid letting them embarrass themselves against bandits. She looked around for a way to get them to shape up.
They were in Senan province in the east of Faerzen, a region that had become prey for marauding brigands, proliferating monsters, and deserters banding together to loot and burn. The empire’s scouts had noted the problems in the area, but its forces were too preoccupied with the war against Six Kingdoms to attend to every stray group of ne’er-do-wells.
“The empire caused this,” Aura murmured. “The least we can do is cull the ones we can.”
Exterminating the bandits would not absolve them of their crimes. It was unlikely to earn them a single drop of forgiveness from the people of Faerzen. If anything, the people might resent the aid of the nation that had slaughtered their rulers and taken their families. Still, nothing would improve unless somebody made an effort. The only way forward was to demonstrate that her conviction was genuine and hope that, in time, her sincerity would soften hardened hearts. No doubt there were many hardships yet to come, but this was the empire’s doing and its responsibility.
As she reminded herself why she was there, an aide approached. “My lady, I believe we ought to refrain from further bloodshed.”
Aura stopped and looked back at the man, frowning. “Why?”
“We must limit our losses. The bandits know they face execution, so they will fight to the last breath. We cannot afford for imperial blood to be spilled needlessly on foreign soil—”
Steel flashed, and all of a sudden, Aura’s spirit weapon lay at his throat. Whatever other nonsense he had been about to spew died on his lips.
She narrowed her eyes. “And is that what you want me to tell the people of Faerzen? ‘We’d rather let your blood flow before we’d spill our own, but we promise we’re here to help you, so please listen to everything we say?’”
She spoke more quickly than usual, and there was anger in her voice. The aide blanched as he realized how severely he had misspoken. She opened her mouth to continue, but at that moment, a roar arose from behind them. She spun back to the battlefield. A great hole had been torn in the circle and the bandits were pouring through, striking back against the imperial forces.
“Why...?”
Her encirclement had been perfect. Trained imperial soldiers should have easily been able to dispose of common bandits once they had them surrounded. Why, then, was this happening? She frowned, thinking, and as she did, an oddity struck her.
“Where are those reserves?”
The aide’s face was pale. “I have not yet sent the order.” He clearly realized he had made an irreversible mistake. He looked on the brink of passing out.
Aura spared him only a glance before exhaling an irritable sigh. “I’ll deal with you later. First, I need to fix this mess—”
She trailed off before she could issue any commands. Before her eyes, a black dragon banner danced on the wind. A dark blotch trailed a cloud of dust across the battlefield, dispatching the bandits with peerless horsemanship. The hole closed and the circle snapped shut. They had cut off their enemy with astonishing discipline, enthralling coordination and, above all, overwhelming force. That they matched the movements of the imperial troops despite never having trained together only made it all the more impressive.
“Incredible,” Aura murmured.
She and her soldiers had unquestionably been saved from disaster, but rather than relief, she felt jealousy. The ingenuity to turn a crisis into an opportunity, the precision to seize the perfect moment and, most of all, the skill to shape the battlefield to his will... All were things Aura coveted herself.
“I still have a long way to go.”
The closer she drew, the higher the wall between them seemed to loom.
“But any wall can be climbed.”
Once, her ambitions had been a fistful of mist, but now they stood before her, so close she could reach out and grasp them. All the more reason she and Liz had sworn not to give in. The time for watching in wonder was past. Now they aspired to outdo him.
“Don’t count me out yet.” Aura raised her spirit weapon high and leveled it at the remaining bandits. “All units, finish them.”
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