Unknown Location.
March 8th 537 A.C.

“So you can see our problem,” he circled the prisoner; a shivering, whimpering man pinned to his knees by the masked guards that held his shoulders. “The question is, what do we do about it?” He turned to face the woman who watched them from the shadows, her face hidden beneath his bandana mask. “I don’t see how we have any other options.”

The prisoner’s eyes widened as she nodded. He spluttered a thousand pleas, begging to have his life spared by the men he’d been paid to betray. He battled against the grip of his captors despite the many wounds that hindered him in a desperate attempt to save himself from a fate he knew was coming, a fate he had no chance of escaping.
When the blade tore the flesh of his throat, he finally, and permanently, grew still.

“Rats,” the man spat, as he wiped the blood from his sword with a ragged cloth. “Is there anything on this earth more pathetic?” He looked once more to the woman but found no one. “Never one to clear up the mess.”
“Shall we dispose of this one sir?”

He walked across the stone floor to where the head had landed and raised it by its greasy, black locks. A pallid face contorted with agony stared back at him. “The enemy’s getting closer to us.” He tossed the head to the guard who had spoken. “Send it to General Harrowclaw.”

“Yes sir.”

“And clean this mess up. I don’t want to see any more rats crawling around here.”
Ă
A fire crackled in the stone fireplace, filling in the room with an army of flickering shadows. A lone figure moved amongst them, studying the various pins stabbed into the map draped over the table before him. Shadows danced across his face, creeping into every crease and wrinkle they could find on his aging skin but he paid them no notice. There were decisions that needed to be made first.

“Do you intend to linger there all night?” he asked without looking up from the table.

A woman stepped into the room and pulled the mask from her face. “The traitor has been dealt with.”

“Good. Keiyren knows what to do.” He waited for her to move but she didn’t. “Is there anything else?”

“Some of the men are restless. They think we’ve lingered here too long.”

“And you?”

“I think the enemy has forgotten what we’re capable of.”

He waved her to his side and indicated the map before him. “They have set up patrols of the outskirts of Jaik and Taris,” he pointed to two black pins stuck the eastern side of the map, “that means they have one unit for every two villages in the third arc. They know we’re making our way towards Heiran’s heart and they’re trying to stop us.”

“Can we sneak men through to the more central arcs? Attack them from behind their defences?”

He shook his head. “Not enough to cause the type of destruction you’re thinking of.”

“Then we meet them head on.”

He paced before the fireplace, scratching his beard in thought. “If we do that, then we risk revealing our location to the enemy.” They had only ever attacked farming villages or new settlements with less than a hundred men to take care of. “We’ll have to take the entire town. No one can be allowed to escape and take word to the others. We have capture or kill everyone and that’s after we get past the Heiran outpost.”

“It had to happen eventually. You targeted their farms and they drew them into the heart. Now its time to move on to the next stage.”

He drew back to the table and traced lines across the map with his fingertips. “It would appear that you’re right. Time to come out of the shadows.” He took out one of the black pins and replaced with a red. “We go to Taris. The slope of the land should give us and advantage on the attack.” He pulled another map from beneath the table and unfurled it. It revealed a close-up of the region in which Taris sat. “Tell the men to rest for tonight, I will need time to plan our attack. Orders will be sent to you before daybreak.”

“Very well,” she bowed to him and made her leave.

He chuckled in her absence and returned the map to its hiding place under the table. “She’ll surpass me one of these days,” he walked to his desk and picked up the plans for Taris’ attack that he’d written earlier that evening. “A fine leader you will make, my daughter.”

Ă
Meira strode through the lavish corridors of her father’s estate with her mind lost in thoughts. He’s testing me. She told herself. He wants to be sure that I’m worthy of the title he’s given me.

She passed a group of men huddled around a game of dice and ordered them to their rooms. They scattered without a word. No one crossed General Gaurn. Pathetic maggots. Why can’t we have real soldiers? I bet we would be twice as formidable with Telfren graduates amongst our forces. She remembered what her father had said to her when she had mentioned it to him; “It is for that very reason that they cannot join us. We succeed through stealth and careful planning, they are taught to face battle head-on, to charge like mindless animals. Heiran’s generals care not how many men they lose, so long as our body count is higher. We cannot take such risks.”

“Maybe that’s our problem,” she thought aloud, tightening her, long auburn hair. “Maybe we don’t take enough risks.”

She stopped beside one of the doors. Her eyes never left the patch of floor in front of her but she could feel exactly where it was. Waves of something she had yet to understand crashed against her mind and part of her swore it could hear a young girl crying. Meiran’s hands fell to her sides and she stood there in petrified silence, her mind possessed by the unknown force. It seeped into her being, a foreign energy that pressured her limbs into movement, begging for her to release it. It‘s locked. It had never listened to her in the past. She didn’t even know why she thought it might listen to her now. It’s locked! It continued to press her. In the back of her mind she heard the child’s cries fall into pleading sobs. “Please let me out. Please. Please!” She clutched at her head, desperate to drown out the sound. She should have run; should have gotten as far away from that door as possible but something held her there. “Please! I don’t want to do this any more. I want to go home.” Her eyes were burning. “I just want to go home…”

Meira yelled and drove her sword into the wall just left of the doorway. A nearby painting swung from the force then sat still. Silence enveloped. “Just shut up,” she growled through gritted teeth. “Just shut up and leave me the hell alone.” She wrenched the sword from the wall and turned to the door. “I’m no one’s saviour.” She slid her weapon back into its sheath. “I can’t even save myself.”


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Ok, so this installment was finished a little sooner than I planned. It's a little longer than the last piece and a lot different. So lemme know what you think and thanks to everyone who's read it thusfar.