The glow of sunlight filtered through canvas greeted Arlette’s eyelids. They fluttered and opened weakly, and she found herself looking up at the roof of a tent that she didn’t recognize. The muted bustle of many assorted people could be heard coming from all directions, though nothing nearby. A soothing feeling of familiarity washed over her. She knew these sounds; she’d heard them hundreds of times before. They were the sounds of camp.

She took a deep breath, only to shudder as the act hurt for some unknown reason. Her vision blurry, she rubbed her eyes with her hands, or at least she tried to. Moving her left arm sent a burning pain running through her left shoulder and she immediately dropped it back down as memories of the battle finally came rushing back to her slowly waking mind.

She was alive. Arlette had not expected to live. Not by the end, at least. But here she was, wherever that would be, still breathing and notably free of restraints. They must have won.

A fountain of questions surged into her mind. Where was she? Whose tent was this? How had the battle ended? Were the Ubrans completely defeated or had they just retreated temporarily? How long had she been out? Most of them she couldn’t answer easily, but at least that last one she could puzzle out some.

Gritting her teeth for the potential upcoming agony, she lifted her left leg so she could see her thigh, pulling away with her right hand the blanket covering her. She shivered as much of her warmth escaped but felt none of the pain she’d expected. The muscle ached slightly, but that was all. With her right hand, she felt for the large wound but found only a long thin scar.

Muscle injuries usually healed in about four days. This wound had been a bit more brutal and worse than the normal such injury, which might have stretched the time out another day or two. And that estimate was only accurate if there was nothing else that needed to heal at the same time. She had plenty of other problems, like her shoulder, her ribs, her diaphragm...

Placing her hand on her stomach, she found several thin scars there as well, but breathing didn’t hurt down there. Only her ribs hurt from that. Bones fully healed on their own in about ten days. Since her ribs and shoulder didn’t seem fully healed yet, her estimate fell between five to ten days. That was how long she’d been out this time.

Even just five days was a lot of time to lose, especially at such a critical moment. She had a lot of stuff she’d need to take care of once she was mobile again, including one specific alcohol-related debt that she really didn’t want to- no! She mentally grabbed every thought related to that asshole and shoved it all into a corner in the far reaches of her mind to be dealt with at a much later time. She wasn’t in the mood to even tangentially think about him and she wouldn’t be for a while.

Arlette’s hearing picked up the sound of soft, quick footsteps drawing closer. The rustle of fabric and a temporary increase in the ambient noise outside told her somebody had entered but she couldn’t see who. A small gasp followed.

“Arly-sis woke up!”

Arlette tensed up immediately and raised her right arm over her chest just in time to stop one of Pari’s patented pounce-hugs from crashing down on her rib cage. The beastgirl seized on her arm instead, wrapping her own arms around it and purring up a storm while Arlette patted her head between her ears.

“Hey there, kiddo,” she wheezed. “What are you doing here?”

Pari was too busy purring to answer, but the joy on her face was bright enough to light up the night sky. This wasn’t bad, as far as the first person to see after coming out of a coma went.

“Pari, what’s taking you so long?” another familiar voice called as they approached the tent. The cloth ruffled again. “I asked you to bring me more cloth like ten- Arlette!”

She left out a relieved sigh.

“Thank goodness you finally opened your eyes again! I was so worried, you were even worse off this time than the last time!”

“How long?” Arlette croaked.

“About seven days,” Sofie replied.

“What happened?”

“With the battle?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I only saw the end of it, but the Ubrans retreated to the north. From what I’ve heard, they’ve been falling back to the west, maybe to Gustil. The Stragmans and Drayhadans who fought in the battle aren’t the only armies those nations sent, apparently, and those other armies are currently chasing down the Ubrans. The Stragmans seem very enthusiastic about it.”

Arlette grunted at the news. The overall picture was better than she’d thought. Still, she wondered how the Masked Battalion had managed to figure out that the defenders had been planning a final battle when they’d tried to keep it as quiet as possible. Not that she minded, given the result.

“Pari, stop rubbing her arm for a minute and go fetch her some water,” Sofie instructed. “Her throat sounds dryer than the Sahara right now.”

The beastkin scurried out into the cold, leaving the two of them alone.

“Where are we?” Arlette asked. The fact that the roof above was made of fabric confused her. Why weren’t they in one of the buildings in the city? It would surely be warmer in there.

“We’re in the camp outside the city. Well, kind of. The Drayhadans are camped to the south and the Stragmans to the north. Trying to avoid any fighting between them, probably. We’re kinda in the middle. The Eterians don’t want any of us camping in the city. Something about ‘territorial sovereignty’ or something like that.”

So some Eterians had survived. The news warmed her heart.

“What about the Kutradians?”

“In the city too, I think. If there are any left, I mean. I haven’t seen any of those bear cats but I haven’t been looking.”

“Hmmm. But we’re outside the walls? Why aren’t we in that old inn like before?”

Sofie fidgeted. “Yeah, well... I’m kinda an Otharian now, and they sorta hate us, soooo...”

“Of course they hate you. Your fellow Earthling fucked us all over, Sofie,” Arlette rasped, giving her a hard stare. “You said we could rely on him.”

“Look, it...”

She stopped for a moment, biting her bottom lip. As she did, Pari came streaking back into the tent, a small bucket of water in her hands. Sofie took out a cup and filled it, handing it to Arlette. The water felt sublime as she swished it around her mouth and slowly gulped it down.

“That woman, the one people call ‘The Monster’? She appeared out of nowhere to kill Blake and that kinda ruined the whole plan,” the Earthling explained. “The two of them made a huge mess of everything.”

“Oh yeah? Who won?” Arlette couldn’t help but wish she could have witnessed that battle. At least she’d caught a glimpse of the fight between the Chos and Taras.

“I... I guess it depends on how you define winning. She won the fight. Blake’s in real bad shape right now—worse than you were, I’d say—though Sam says he’s been slowly improving since I came out here. He’s apparently running the country from his bed and making loads of annoying demands, so I’m sure he’ll be alright eventually.”

“So she won.”

“Welllllllll...” She rubbed her jaw with one hand as she thought over how to explain it. “So when I made it to where they were, I interrupted them just as she was going to kill him, and-”

“You did what?!” Arlette choked.

“Well it just made me angry, you know?” Sofie huffed, crossing her arms defensively. “The two of them had never met in person before. They’d never actually talked to each other at all. But like, he was shooting at her when she was still kilometers away from the city and she was rushing at him with that giant sword of hers and I was just like, at least fucking try to see if you can work something out before you try to kill each other, you know? There’s probably only, like, four or five people from Earth on this entire world, and the two of them just skipped over everything and went straight to murder. It was stupid and wasteful. So I tried to talk some sense into them a little. And that’s when Blake won.

“It turns out she was working with the Ubrans because she thought they could send her back home with the machine that brought her here. But Blake’s the expert when it comes to the ancient stuff that brought us here, and he’s told me several times that they can’t send us back. So he seized on that and just... absolutely ripped her heart out and crushed it. Metaphorically, I mean. Physically, she would have been fine.”

“And... how is that winning, exactly?”

“She has children. Young children, I think. And they didn’t get transported here with her. I’m not sure, but the way she talked makes me think she is a single mother, too.”

“Oh, wow...”

“I think that goal was what she was using to keep pushing herself forward this whole time. And once she realized that it was all pointless, it was like the flame inside her that kept her going just went out like a candle in a hurricane. She hasn’t moved since.”

“Wait, what?”

“She slumped down onto the floor, kinda bent over and staring down at the ground between her legs, and hasn’t moved ever since.”

“So, she died?”

Sofie shook her head. “No, it’s more like she’s... stopped. She doesn’t respond to sound, touch, scent, or anything else we tried, but her body is still as warm as a living person. Blake put up walls dozens of meters thick around her and won’t let anybody near her but has cameras and stuff monitoring her constantly.”

“Why not just try to kill her since she’s vulnerable?”

“He’s afraid that she’ll wake up if he tries. Blake won’t admit it, but he’s absolutely terrified of her. He knows now that if she really wants to kill him, it’s not a matter of if he’ll survive but rather how long. So he’s decided to just not poke the bear and hope everything goes alright.”

“...I see.”

“So yeah... that’s what happened,” Sofie finished with a content nod.

Arlette found herself frowning at her friend’s attitude.

The Earthling stared back at her, confused. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you know how many people died because of Otharia?” Arlette reminded her. “We all needed those bombs to fall when they were supposed to. We needed those machines you have fighting along side us when we struck the Ubran forces. But you weren’t there, and now there are thousands of children missing a father or a mother that wouldn’t have to if you’d held up your end.”

“But The Monster-”

“No buts. All the excuses in the world won’t bring those people back. Your side messed up, but we paid the price.”

“It wasn’t our fault!” Sofie protested.

“Tell that to all the new orphans out there and see if they care about your reasons.”

The two fell into a tense, awkward silence for a moment. Arlette’s disposition had soured dramatically from the last part of their conversation.

“I think I need some time alone,” she finally said. Looking at the younger woman was making bad feelings well up in Arlette’s heart. “Please leave.”

“Wha...” The rejection cast a pall on the younger woman. Arlette understood that Sofie was excited to spend time with her after so long apart, but she wasn’t in the mood anymore. “Arlette, you’re not healed yet. Somebody has to take care of you.”

“Let Pari do it then. At least she kept her part of the deal.”

Sofie let out a dejected sigh and slowly walked out of the tent. Pari looked on, a confused expression on her face. Arlette beckoned her forward and scratched her behind the ears, reviving the purrs from before. For a while, she just laid there, patting the head of the adorable tyke and trying to soak in as much joy from her as she could. Her body was still in pretty rough shape, but right now she needed healing of a different kind.

----------------------------------------

Later that day, Arlette was already sick of her view of the cloth above. The desire to get up, leave the tent, and wander the camps outside beat strongly within her, but she didn’t feel physically up to it just yet. Tomorrow, perhaps. For now, she mostly just lay on the cot she’d woken up on, occasionally sitting up and, if she was feeling daring, walking slowly around the enclosure. She’d been in the process of sitting up when she heard voices outside her tent.

“Ah, hello again,” Sofie said, seemingly a little nervous.

“She back with us yet?” the unmistakable voice of Akhustal Palebane asked.

“She woke up this morning,” Sofie replied, “but she’s not in any condition- hey, wait! Stop, she needs rest! And leave that thing outside!”

The Chos grunted in annoyance and Arlette heard an extremely weighty thump as something fell to the ground outside the tent. Just as Arlette became upright, the tent flap flipped aside and the distinctive silhouette of the Stragman ruler presented itself before her. The giant took several steps into the relative gloom, Sofie hot on her heels. As the tent flap closed and the light became more palatable for Arlette’s eyes, she got an up-close look at the Chos and blinked.

Just days after taking on one of the deadliest people in the world, somebody who could bring terror to all but a handful of people before he was boosted to absurd levels through chimirin, the massive woman looked almost normal. Arlette could see an array of long scars, freshly healed, running all across her body, but the only real, permanent damage she could see were the last two fingers on her left hand, each missing the last knuckle, and her completely absent left ear. The ear was the most notable, with skin having healed over the exposed skull and sliced-off scalp but only a light fuzz of white hair covering the area.

The Scyrian body was very good at putting itself back together again. The only time when an injury would be permanent was when a part of the body was lost and there was nothing left to put back together. A crushed finger could heal to the point where it worked as good as it ever had, but a severed finger was gone for good. The Chos would never have those parts back. Still... to come out of that battle with only those two small losses stood as one of the most impressive feats she’d ever seen.

“You want this?” the Stragman asked, dispensing with all formalities as she held up a large tome with a chain hanging from its spine. Arlette immediately recognized it for what it was: the large book the Ubran ruler always held.

“Why are you offering me that?” Arlette asked.

“One of the Chos’s duties is to divy up the spoils for a conquest as significant as an Emperor. You were there when he died, yes? Since you helped, you get dibs on the book if you want it.”

Palebane eyed her with what Arlette could only call skeptical hostility. Arlette returned her gaze with her own icy stare. The sight of the beastwoman caused a second round of sourness that day to well up inside her, and the Chos’s attitude wasn’t helping.

“Help? I killed him all on my own,” Arlette frostily replied. “Strangled him to death with that very chain.”

The Chos raised a single eyebrow at her statement.

“It’s the truth.”

“Whatever,” came the curt reply. “Do you want it or not?”

Arlette studied the tome in the larger woman’s hand, its spine so wide that even the giant’s fingers were having a bit of difficulty wrapping around it. If she had to be honest, she didn’t want it one bit. The book held no real value to her. It would serve as a trophy at best, a constant reminder of her past at worst. But then again, there was somebody else who she was sure would adore it.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll take it,” she answered.

“Here,” the Stragman said, shoving the text into Arlette’s chest. Relieved of her burden, she turned and headed for the exit.

“That’s it?” Arlette called after her, her temper failing as she steadied herself. “You just walk in here like you own the place, shove a book in my hand, and leave?”

Palebane halted for a moment, looking back at Arlette with dangerous eyes, but Arlette was beyond caring. Neither the fact that the Chos was essentially a king nor that she was likely the strongest person on the continent mattered.

“What do you have to say to all the people who died because you people didn’t honor the treaty when you were supposed to?” Arlette continued. “What do you have to say to all of us who suffered and starved for days on end while we fought for our lives while you sat in your forest and watched?”

“Listen up, because I’m only going to say this once,” the Chos growled. “We Stragmans are not Eterium’s Shells; we don’t exist solely to come running to your rescue whenever the big bad meanies show up. We have our own problems to deal with. Got it? Talk to me like that ever again and I’ll bash your head in.”

With those chilling words echoing through Arlette’s mind, Akhustal Palebane made her exit. “Good luck, ‘Slayer of Emperors’,” she called sarcastically as she left.

“What in the world was that about?!” Sofie gasped once they were alone in the tent once more.

“It doesn’t matter,” Arlette said. “They’re gone now.”

Sofie shook her head. “No, it’s weird. She’s been in a great mood ever since I got here. She kept walking around their camp telling anybody who would listen about some fight she had with some guy named “Taras” in the last battle. She was so pumped that she told me all about it twice when she came by each day to check if you were awake. I don’t know why she treated you that way. It was like she didn’t want to be in here with you a second more than she had to.”

Arlette frowned. “Well, I didn’t want her in here any more than necessary either. Let’s talk about something else. You want the book, right?”

Sofie’s eyes lit up. Arlette hadn’t missed how Sofie kept glancing at the prize in her arms. “Yes, please!” she chirped, practically ripping the tome from Arlette’s grip and hugging it to her chest. However, instead of opening it immediately, the Earth woman looked pensive and distracted, as if she were busy pondering over something.

“Hey Arlette,” she said after a while, “what do you want to do, now that this is finally over? I mean, Sebastian is dead, right? The Emperor too. You don’t have anything tying you down anymore.”

Sofie was the one person still alive who knew the story of Arlette’s past with Sebastian and the rest. After the whole incident on that fateful foggy night, she’d demanded to know what had gone down and bugged the weak, bedridden Arlette until Arlette had finally cracked. Honestly, Arlette had been glad afterward. It had felt good to confide in somebody she liked on her own free will instead of being forced to explain to General Astalaria.

The question was a good one. Back during the siege, when the odds of survival had been so slim, she’d thought it a waste of time to even consider such a question. But now, she needed an answer but found that she had none.

“I don’t know,” she confessed as she went through her options. “I guess... just find another job as a guard, maybe join a mercenary band if somebody will have me... Can’t realistically start my own again, don’t have the money for that now...”

“Is that all? Just... the same thing you’ve always done? Aren’t you sick of it by now?”

“What else is there? My family is stuck on the other side of The Divide and I haven’t seen them since I was a small child, my adoptive parents died in an accident five years ago, the Ivory Tears is gone... all I have is myself now. What else could I do?”

“...I know of a job you could take,” Sofie informed her after a moment of contemplative silence.

“No,” Arlette immediately replied.

“What? But-”

Arlette’s mouth twisted into a bitter scowl. “I’m not working for him. Not after what just happened.”

“But listen! It’s perfect for you! And us!” the younger woman pressed. “Look, Blake’s hurt, he’s tired, and he’s sick of having to deal with military matters, so he’s looking for somebody to be his head... general or whatever to let him focus on building things and whatnot.”

“Sounds great. I bet there’s a whole crowd of people who would gladly take his coin to do that.”

“But he doesn’t want those people. The biggest reason he didn’t offload this stuff to somebody already is that he’s paranoid and he doesn’t like the idea of giving control to somebody with existing allegiances. In his mind, anybody with a family or a home country is suspect. They’d be tempted to use the power he gives them to free Otharia or help their homeland, or their family could be held hostage to force them to do things against his interests.

“Believe it or not, he actually was the one who asked me, not the other way around. He thinks you’re competent and that you ‘have your head on straight’, as he put it. The fact that you managed to survive what you just went through and killed the Emperor to boot probably impressed him too. When he found out that you don’t have a home or a family to go back to, he asked me to offer you the job. You’re the perfect candidate in his mind.

“Think about the advantages compared to just being some guard or mercenary. You wouldn’t have to live payday to payday; you could sleep in a nice, fancy set of rooms made custom just for you inside a giant fortress instead of laying on some shoddy straw mattress in a cheap inn; you’d get to spend time with Pari and me as much as you want; you could probably name whatever salary you wanted and he’d take it... There’s no reason not to jump at this opportunity!”

“Yeah, it sure seems there’s a lot to like. Still no.”

“Wh-why?!”

“Tell me the truth, Sofie,” Arlette requested. “Does Lord Ferros care about any of our lives? When his fight with the Monster was over, was he upset that his fuck-up had caused the death of thousands of people?”

Sofie bit her lip again.

“...well?” Arlette insisted.

Her companion sighed. “He... was more upset that his zeppelin had almost crashed into the city wall,” she reluctantly admitted.

“That’s why.”

“Look, he’s... it’s more complicated than that. Could you just... think it over for a bit at least? Sleep on it for a bit.”

“Alright, fine, I’ll think about it,” Arlette lied. She wasn’t going to waste even a moment doing anything of the sort.

“Thanks.” With a soft groan, Sofie rose to her feet. “Well, uh, I should probably... um-”

“Just go read your stupid book, it’s fine,” Arlette snorted with a roll of her eyes.

“Okaythanksbye!” Sofie called as she practically blurred through the tent flap.

Arlette gave silent thanks to the fact that they didn’t have to share a tent. She had a feeling that her Earthling friend wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

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“You seem a lot stronger than the last time you woke up after nearly dying,” Sofie noted a day later. “I had to feed you with a spoon like a baby for a little, remember? You could barely even lift your arm.”

“Better food,” Arlette replied as she chewed enthusiastically on some hearty bread topped with garoph cheese. After the siege, even this simple meal tasted like paradise. She decided she would never take real food for granted ever again. “Sleeping more helps too. Speaking of which, you look beat. Did you stay up all night?”

There was a startling contrast between the younger woman’s physical appearance and her body language. Dark semicircles rimmed the lower half of her eyes, her skin had a pallid, greasy quality to it, and her eyes lacked their usual sharpness. And yet, her whole body seemed to buzz with more energy than Arlette had seen in her in a long time, maybe ever.

“The Emperor’s book, it’s... it’s amazing! It’s almost perfect!” Sofie gushed. “You know how to read the Ubran language, right?”

Arlette frowned. “Maybe. Most writing on the other continent is done in ‘Ubran Common’,” she said with distaste. “That might not be what’s in there, I’d have to see it. Even if it is, I haven’t read Ubran Common since I was a child so I’d be very rusty.”

“But you can read it,” Sofie reiterated.

“Probably. Why?”

“Because,” Sofie said in a near whisper, leaning in close with a sudden sparkle in her eyes like she was sharing some deep secret, “the first part is written in the old script like my other book, but on the opposite pages, somebody translated it! It’s exactly what I need to finally really crack this wide open! This is my Rosetta Stone!”

“Your what?”

“Rosetta Stone! It’s this old stone from... it’ll help me translate faster and better.”

“I see.”

“So how are you feeling? Do you think you’ll be feeling good enough to start tonight?” the younger woman chirped enthusiastically.

With mounting dread, Arlette realized that her prospects of quiet, relaxing, evenings with a nice, calming drink were one poorly thought-out answer away from completely disappearing for a long time.

“Are you sure you want to translate so loosely?” she asked after several moments of desperate thought. “Relying on my rusty understanding could lead to mistakes. Why not just learn the language yourself? That way you’ll know that your translations are consistent and correct.”

“But that would take months! I don’t want to wait that long.”

“What do you mean? Didn’t it only take you a matter of days to learn Eterian Common once you finally got a chance to sit down and study it?”

“That’s only because Mister Salvide was nice enough to teach me. He was a great teacher too.”

“Sofie, it takes other people years to learn a written language, even with a great teacher. You were more fluent in Eterian Common than most scribes and you only started learning the language after we got here less than half a year ago.”

“Well, I mean...” the younger woman scratched her head with embarrassment. “For some reason, I always can remember a word once I learn it, even if I’ve only seen it once. So that helps a whole lot.”

“Really? Have you always been able to do that?”

“No... I was always pretty good with other languages—that’s why I started focusing on them when I went to college—but it’s only been like this since I came to this world, and I didn’t even realize it until a little while ago.”

“Well, you always wanted a power like the other Earthlings, right? Now we know what it is.”

“This power sucks. Compared to the others, it’s worthless. Reading well doesn’t help you when people are trying to capture or kill you.”

Arlette shook her head. “Not everybody has to be an amazing fighter to be worth something. To be honest, I’m incredibly jealous. I’ve had to learn many written languages in my life, and it’s always been a pain in the butt. And who says that’s all it is? Maybe it’s deeper and you just haven’t realized what you can really do with it yet.”

“If you say so...”

“I do say so. Hey, I just thought of something. Do you need somebody to teach you, or would a book be enough?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“I think I know something that could teach you Ubran Common faster than I ever could. I’m feeling good enough to head into the city. I’ll pick it up while I’m in there.”

“Really? That sounds great! How are you feeling? Are you all healed?”

Arlette stood up and flexed her legs. They responded with no pain. “Close. My shoulder still hurts, but the rest of me seems mostly intact now.”

Sofie gave her a tired but relieved smile. “I’m glad.”

“Thanks for taking care of me again.”

“What else are friends for but spending time together and taking care of one another?” she laughed. “Speaking of which, have you given any more thought to Blake’s offer?”

“Still thinking,” Arlette dodged, quickly heading for the exit before Sofie could press the subject. “I’m going to head into Crirada for a bit. See you later.”

With a brisk gait, Arlette made her way towards the walls of the city where she’d fought and bled for so long, her head busy trying to figure out a way to let her friend down easy while she still could.

----------------------------------------

Arlette had worried for a moment, as she approached the west archway entrance to the city, that the Eterians had closed off the city completely in a bid to keep the vastly superior forces of the Stragmans or Drayhadans from marching in and declaring the city theirs. It would have been a futile gesture as, without the Otharian machines to guard the entrance as they had against the Ubrans, the Eterians would have held against the armies outside like a wet piece of paper. Still, she would have understood the fear. The Eterian army had been a shadow of its former might before this final battle, and now was a not even a fraction of that. Living with two predators outside your door would be terrifying, even when those predators had saved you the day prior.

Her worries proved unfounded, however, as she saw an elf pass by the guards posted at the entrance, with a beastman following not long after pulling a cart loaded with food. Of course. The Eterians had no choice, they had nothing to eat if they shut themselves inside.

The guards saw her coming and straightened. Arlette noticed several of the guards slide a hand towards the swords hanging on their hips. Well, if that wasn’t a good sign, she didn’t know what was.

“Halt,” the closest guard ordered as he approached. She couldn’t help but worry about the situation. Not only was her arm still not fully healed, but she also had no weapons on her, having not had the chance to replace her sword or knives.

The guard eyed her suspiciously. “You came from the Otharian camp,” he said, pointing to the small group of tents surrounded by skitters for protection. The way he said it sounded less like an observation and more like an accusation.

“Yeah? What of it?” she asked in return.

“Turn your ass around and go somewhere else. We don’t let filth through here.”

“I just gotta take care of some business,” she stated. “Won’t take long.”

“The only business you’ll get around here is the business end of my spear,” another guard chimed in.

Arlette’s ire kept rising, and she fought to keep it in check. These asshats were letting the other two camps in, but not her. Either they were too stupid to realize that the Stragmans and Drayhadans abandoning their responsibilities and sitting by the wayside while Eterians died was just as bad or worse than what the Otharians did, or they did realize it but knew they couldn’t stand up to the forces outside their city and were letting their anger out by bullying her instead.

“Enough of this. I fought on the wall just as much as any of you,” she reminded them. “I even killed the Emperor with my own hands! I don’t have all day. Move aside.”

The guard burst into laughter.

“I never thought an elf prince would look so plain,” one remarked in jest. “Such round ears as well!”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, getting more confused and irritated by the heartbeat.

“You been living under a rock, woman?” another replied. “Everybody knows that Prince Tehlmar slew the Emperor.”

Arlette froze for a moment as those words slowly processed in her mind. Now she understood the Chos’s mocking parting words. That son of a bitch stole her kill! Oh, she was going to absolutely beat the living daylights out of him. As if she didn’t have enough reasons to want to murder the bastard.

But no, that needed to wait. She needed to accomplish what she’d come to do first, and elf punching could come later. Right now, she needed to enter the city. Luckily for her, infiltration was a specialty of hers.

Holding in her anger as the guard jeered at her retreating back, she made her way north to the Stragman camp. Blending in with the crowds for a little, she donned an illusion based on a nearby beastkin sporting perky triangular red-brown ears and a bushy tail of the same color. Then, a few moments later, clad in a different face and body than the last time, she sauntered back to the guards and almost snickered as they let her through with a smile and several not-so-subtle glances as her rear.

Losers.

Dropping the disguise not long after, she continued to the citadel in the city center. As she went, she took note of the people she passed by, trying to get an estimate of how many Eterians had survived. Her unscientific answer: depressingly few.

Word of the Nocend victory was surely spreading already. Soon the news would reach all across the continent, and the many refugees who’d fled east would come back and return this dead city to the lively metropolis it had been before. But they wouldn’t arrive back at Crirada for at least another few days. For the moment, the streets were largely barren, save for a few small groups of weary soldiers every few intersections.

As she went, Arlette noticed that every so often one of the Eterians would notice her and scowl. They would watch her as she passed, and sometimes say things in low tones to others nearby, who would then also scowl. The realization troubled her. She understood the current loathing the Eterians had for Otharia, but there should have been no way for them to connect her to Otharia on sight. This was something else.

Once inside the citadel, she made her way to the rooms of the now-deceased Supreme General. That was where she’d find what she was looking for. Normally, there’d be guards posted outside the chambers, but at this point, there just didn’t seem to be enough people left to waste on something like that. She strode inside.

“Who are you and what are you doing... you? You’re Arlette Demirt, aren’t you? You have a lot of guts, walking in here.”

Arlette froze. In retrospect, she should have expected somebody in the room, but she was still caught off-guard by the man sitting behind the desk as she walked in. She was even more unprepared for how he had recognized her when she’d never seen him before.

“How do you know who I am?” she asked warily.

“The general left many instructions before he died,” the man replied, picking up several sheets of parchment off to the side, “including specific notes concerning you.”

He glanced at the parchment and began to read from it. “Not to be trusted. While allowing Demirt to board the Otharian ship is the best option for the plan to succeed, should something fail on the Otharian side, she is surely the reason why. She has some sort of connection with Otharia. Watch for treachery.”

No way. That arrogant, stuck-up waste of space was trying to bury her from beyond the grave? And to think she’d actually felt some small bit of respect for him before the battle, and had even felt a slight bit sad when he died!

“Oh, no. Nonono. Don’t you put that shit on me,” she growled. “For that entire star-blighted season, I fought and bled and killed just as much as you or anybody else on that gods-forsaken wall. I foiled a plot to open the gates once, all on my own! I even killed the fucking Emperor, no matter how many of you fools think that elven dipshit did it! I pulled my fucking weight! And that asswipe has the gall to say that I might be a traitor?! Fuck him, and if you believe him over me, fuck you too.”

The man stared back at her, his eyes narrowed. “Supreme General Astalaria was a great man. He warned that you might try something with the Otharians, and then you left us without support as the Ubrans tore us to pieces. What happened seems obvious to me and the rest of the surviving officers, and we’re going to let the rest of the nation know of your actions. Now, I suggest you leave before things get any more serious.”

“You fucking pieces of shit!” she snapped, turning and marching over to the bookshelf standing against the side wall. “I put everything on the line every day and this is how I get treated! It wasn’t my fault, but you don’t care! You just want somebody to blame!”

The deceased general had always been interested in the Obura continent and the Ubrans in particular, which was probably where his initial suspicions of her as a child had come from. As such, he had an entire section of his bookshelf dedicated to books about the Empire. Pulling out a book with the words “Ubran Common Dictionary” written on the spine, she tucked it under her arm.

“Don’t touch those, unless you wish to be a thief as well as a traitor!” the man said, rising to his feet in anger.

“I’m just taking what I’m owed for all the suffering that dead bastard put me through,” Arlette shot back. “What are you going to do about it? If I’m in cahoots with the Otharians, do you dare touch me? You saw what those bombs did. It would be a shame if one fell onto this place.”

The man stopped in his tracks, sputtering indignantly. Arlette took a small amount of satisfaction in his impotent anger. If they were going to smear her as a villain and make it hard for her to find work in Eterium no matter what she did, she might as well get a little for herself out of it. Her eyes fell on an unopened bottle of Drayhadan wine on the desk between them, something he’d likely traded for just recently.

“I’m taking this too,” she said, scooping the drink off the desk. With a derisive sniff, she marched out into the hallway before the Eterian could say any more.

Popping another disguise over herself as soon as she was alone, Arlette left the citadel in a hurry. If rumors and stories had already spread around some of the Eterians, she needed to get out as soon as possible.

The whole situation threatened to send her spiraling into depression. Already, everything was falling apart. She’d planned on asking around for possible work while in the city, but now it felt like she had little hope of finding anything here, and even if she did, there was little to guarantee the employment wouldn’t be suddenly terminated when word got around that she was some backstabber who contributed to the death of thousands of loyal Eterian soldiers. Back in the day, the Mercenary Guild would have protected her, but after the invasion, the guild was surely as dead as its members.

A mercenary’s reputation mattered, and General Astalaria had taken hers with him. It would take a long time for her to recover some semblance of what she’d had before, if she ever could. One thing that could really help her was if people knew she’d killed the Emperor, but now that seemed taken from her as well.

The truth of the matter was that, before this sudden character assassination, she hadn’t even cared much about taking credit for the Emperor’s death. She hadn’t killed him for fame, she’d killed him for personal reasons. The benefits of being the one to kill the most powerful man in the world hadn’t even been on her mind when she’d killed him. In general, she felt mostly fine with somebody else taking the fame. The part that pissed her off was Tehlmar being the one to steal her credit. It felt like a second betrayal.

As she walked out of the city, she pulled the cork from the bottle of wine and took a large gulp. He’d wanted one last drink with her, hadn’t he? Maybe it was time to go settle it once and for all.

After stopping by her tent to drop off the book, Arlette approached the Drayhadan camp, half-empty wine bottle in hand. She could feel the alcohol boosting her courage as she closed in.

Looking around the camp, she couldn’t help but notice how different it was from the others. The area seemed sectioned off into four large and distinct groups instead of one large, cohesive unit like the Stragmans and the Ubrans before. Not only that, but everybody she could see was male and an elf.

Three soldiers stationed to the south of the camp stopped her, bored expressions on their faces.

“No barbarians allowed in the camp,” the lead one stated.

“I am here on an invitation from Prince Tehlmar. Please inform him that ‘Arlette’ is here to see him,” she informed the elves, taking another swig before popping the cork back into the bottle.

The trio shared a look that Arlette couldn’t interpret. After a moment of quiet discussion, one ran towards the camp while the other two turned back to her.

“Please come with us,” the lead guard said, his voice much more polite.

“That easy?” she wondered aloud as she followed them. “You’re very trusting for Drayhadans.”

“We were told that an ‘Arlette’ might show up,” the elf explained. “Though after so many days, we’d mostly figured you weren’t coming.”

The elves led her through the camp to a tent about fifteen paces wide and ten paces long. Even if the size wasn’t a tipoff that this was a special tent, the way it was almost like an island isolated from the rest of the camp by a large ring of empty ground where no other tents were pitched told her all she needed to know. There they found the third soldier and another elf waiting for them. The new elf carried himself with authority, and the others clearly deferred to him.

“I am Artiermius, aide de camp to Prince Tehlmar. You are Arlette?” he asked, somehow seeming to look down his nose at her even though she was slightly taller than him.

“Yes.”

“And you wish to see the prince?”

She didn’t, really, except maybe to repeatedly ram her knee into his face, but... “I do. I promised him I would, and I pay my debts.”

“Very well,” the elf replied. He nodded dismissively to the two elves that had brought her into the camp and they saluted and left. The third one stayed.

“The prince is inside,” the elf informed her, lifting the nearby flap. He turned to the remaining soldier. “I must fetch something. Watch her for now.”

Arlette took a deep breath, steeled herself emotionally, and strode inside, the soldier following behind and taking a place by the entrance. The tent’s interior was mostly what she was expecting: a much more lavish, but still sensible, take on an officer’s tent. No crazy furniture or anything like some of the Ubrans had.

“I’m here, you bastard,” she said, spotting a form lying on a cot near the back of the tent. “I’m here for that fucking drink you wanted so desperately.”

There came no response.

“Hey, wake up,” she continued, stepping closer. “You have some explaining to do about the Emp...”

Arlette’s voice trailed off as she got a better view of the figure. Tehlmar laid on the cot, except it wasn’t Tehlmar anymore. It was just his corpse.

For some reason, it didn’t seem real. Jaquet couldn’t die. He just couldn’t. He’d always been this dynamic, powerful presence, a demigod of battle, hard to stop and impossible to kill. Never, in the entire time she’d shared with him, had she ever worried for his survival.

And yet, there he was, his state undeniable. Large gashes covered his exposed torso and arms. She could still remember the hazy sight of the blood leaking out of him when he’d finally collapsed. His left ear was also missing, sliced off near the base. Had it been missing when she’d last seen him?

Suddenly, a lot of the last two days became much clearer. The Chos’s behavior made more sense. She’d always been a fan of Jaquet and had seemingly been cooperating with the elf version of him in some way. Perhaps seeing Arlette had sparked unwanted thoughts and memories in the Stragman woman. The story of his valorous victory over the Emperor made more sense as well. The part about that which had hurt the most was that the man she’d known would never have done such a thing as steal valor from another and would not have allowed others to do it for him. Now she realized that it had come about precisely because he wasn’t there to stop it. The Drayhadans wanted a reason to hold their head high.

All of that was easy to understand. What she didn’t understand were the feelings inside her, or rather, the lack thereof. She’d expected to feel anger at the sight of him, and then sadness and sorrow, but instead she just felt... hollow.

“So this is it, huh?” she said to him, or maybe to herself. “This is how it ends...”

The entrance flap rustled and the self-important elf entered, holding a cube-shaped cloth-wrapped package about half a pace large. He presented it to her, saying, “Prince Tehlmar wanted you to have this.”

“What is it?”

The elf shook his head. “He would not say. Only that it was for you.”

Arlette reluctantly accepted the item, tucking it under her arm with the wine bottle gripped between her fingers. For several moments, she just stared at the prince’s body in silence, trying to wrap her head around Tehlmar, her, the moment, and everything in between.

“...what’s going to happen to him?” she finally asked.

“Normally, when members of the Masked Battalion pass, their bodies are enshrined within the Battalion’s halls to honor their service. However, Princess Pyria insists upon a full royal funeral befitting his station as a prince and a war hero, followed by his cremation. We will transport him south tomorrow morning at first light.”

“I see.”

Looking at the lifeless form before her, his glassy eyes staring blankly upward, she couldn’t keep up her denial any longer. She couldn’t pretend that he was somebody else. She couldn’t keep compartmentalizing the pain and the happiness, shunting all her anger at Tehlmar while keeping her memories of Jaquet unaffected. Her mind kept returning to the elf’s eyes the last time she’d seen him alive. They’d been a different color and a different shape on a different face, but somehow, she’d still seen Jaquet’s gaze within them.

This was her friend. This was the final, true form of that loud, boisterous, drunken companion. The man who’d always been there for her... until he hadn’t.

“The Stragmans found him and the Emperor’s body lying near each other, along with an unknown, mostly-dead woman,” the elf said after a little. “That woman was you, was it not?”

“What makes you say that?”

“There was a large illusion that caught the attention of both sides. It is but a guess, but I would venture that to be the work of Arlette Demirt, illusion genius.”

Arlette couldn’t help but let out a laugh at the last bit. “You seem to know a lot about me for somebody I’ve never met.”

“He would speak of you from time to time when he became highly inebriated. But only then.”

He paused to consider his words.

“You were there, were you not? You saw the battle. Did it go as the story says? Did he vanquish the Emperor? Or was it you who did the deed, or perhaps another out there somewhere?”

After another long moment of thought, Arlette brought the bottle up to her mouth and bit down on the cork, pulling it free with a loud pop. Spitting the cork into her left hand, she put the container to her lips and took several large gulps of wine.

“It was all him,” she told Artiermius. “He killed the Emperor, and then I told the world. He was the muscle, I was the face. That’s how we always were, all the way to the end.”

Reaching forward and grabbing the ex-prince’s chin, she opened his lips and poured the rest of the bottle into his mouth and throat.

“What are you doing?” the elf beside her demanded with a start.

“Fulfilling my promise,” she replied. She took one long, final look at the corpse. “Goodbye, Jaquet.”

Without another word, she turned and left.

----------------------------------------

“Hey, Sofie, would you mind keeping Pari busy for a while?” Arlette asked, taking the last bites of her dinner. The meal was just as good as the rest, but she found herself unable to enjoy the taste as she had before. “I need a little time to deal with some stuff.”

“Hey sweetie,” Sofie called out to Pari, who was busy messing with her candlemaking equipment as she so often did. “What do you say we go test some of your new candles?”

Pari perked up. “But Sofie-sis said not to test in the camp,” she replied.

“We’ll take some skitters and go out to the battlefield,” Sofie explained.

“Okay!” The beastkin child hurriedly rounded up some candles of dubious function, threw them in a sack, and rushed excitedly out of the tent with Sofie hot on her heels yelling for her to slow down.

A stillness descended upon the tent as Arlette took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She’d avoided opening the package for the last few hours, but its presence kept slowly eating away at her state of mind. It was time to stop avoiding it.

Unwrapping the cloth tied around the cube, she found herself staring at a wooden box with a folded envelope on top. The shiny, polished surface of the wood and the exquisite carvings adorning the top lent it an aura of significance, but she put it to the side for now and picked up the envelope. It, too, looked fancy. It was paper instead of parchment and the quality was some of the best she’d ever seen.

Her name was written on the outside of the envelope. With trepidation coursing through her veins, she opened it. An equally fancy piece of paper could be found inside. She couldn’t help but chuckle at Jaquet’s familiar, messy scrawl on both the envelope and the note inside, several sheets long. It felt so out of place on the immaculate paper, like it was almost defacing the stationary. There were even sections that were scribbled out, leaving the whole thing feeling rather rushed and sloppy. How very like him. She began to read.

Hello, Arlette. I love you. I feel it is important to state this right out front, because if there’s one thing I want you to know, this is it.

Arlette balked immediately. What? Was this a joke? It was like being confessed to by your uncle. Brow furrowed, she read on.

This is my backup, in case I don’t live through the upcoming battles. Back when I was Jaquet, I would never have considered writing something like this, but things are different now. I’m not as strong as I used to be, meaning the odds of my survival are lower than I’d like to admit. If you’re reading this, then I didn’t make it. But it also means you did, so overall, a worthwhile result.

I hope you can understand that I never wanted it to happen that way. Not any of this, but especially that one time. You know the one. It was the regrettable outcome from the hole I’d dug myself over the years. I never intended to hurt you like that, but I will not deny that I did. For that, I am deeply sorry.

I feel like I should take a moment to explain myself, if you are charitable enough to allow it. My role as a member of the Masked Battalion was to travel around Nocend and provide updates on the continent as I went. For years, I did that, drifting around and working with various mercenary bands but never staying with one group for long. Due to my past and many other things I won’t get into, I felt miserable the entire time.

Then I found you, a bright-eyed young upstart looking to start your own band. I saw an opportunity to make my life simpler. By helping you start the Ivory Tears, I’d have more control over my activities. Instead of always having to find new work on my own, making and breaking relationships each time, I’d be able to steer the band around Nocend and reap the benefits while you did all the actual work of leadership and administration.

In the beginning, you were nothing but a means to an end. But as time went on, you became more than that. At first, it was great; I felt happy for the first time in decades.

Yet by the time I realized what you meant to me, I’d also realized the problem. There was no way you would love “Jaquet”. Jaquet was ugly, he was fat, he was far too old. You would say so yourself sometimes after a few hours of drinking, and each time it was like a dagger to my heart. But most of all, Jaquet was a lie. If I wanted to be with you, I had to tell you the truth. The same truth that would make you hate me.

There were so many times when I almost let you know, but I never could take that last step. I had my duty to my homeland, and to the Battalion, to stay hidden as long as possible. That’s what I told myself, at least. But when I look back at it now, it’s so clear that I was just afraid of what you would think. The thought of you hating me kept me frozen, unable to do what I now know I should have done, and every day that I kept lying to you only made it worse.

It’s almost funny, when I think about it. I’ve lived on the battlefield for so long now, and nearly died so many times, but the fear I feel for my life barely registers. And yet the prospect of revealing my true self to you scared me more than the thought of facing down thirty enemies all on my lonesome. When the time finally came and I reverted against my will, I couldn’t even bring myself to look your way. Just the thought of seeing the betrayal in your eyes terrified me more than any blade ever could.

I don’t know what I’m going to say or do when I find you. I’ve worried over it these past days, fretting to the point of distraction. What do I say? Do I just beg for your forgiveness at the first moment we meet again? Do I try to bring back the dynamic we used to have to show you that I’m still the same person that spent all those years with you, and then apologize with everything I have later on? Maybe you’ll be happy to see me. Maybe I’ll end up a hero rushing in to save you at the last second. Or maybe you won’t recognize me, or maybe you will, and you’ll decide to let your blade do the talking. Or maybe, worst of all, I’ll never find you no matter how I try. Whatever ends up happening, I hope it goes well for both of us.

These last few days, I’ve been working on something to properly convey my thoughts. I know you have trouble believing only words from somebody who misled you for so long, so perhaps this will show how serious I am. I’m sorry it’s incomplete, but I won’t have time to finish it properly with this sudden increase in pace. I hope you will accept it anyway.

Live well, Arlette. And please, remember us as we were, not how we are.

Jaquet Delon

Tehlmar Esmae, First Prince of Esmaeyae

Arlette’s hands were trembling by the end, though whether with rage or something else she wasn’t sure. Even now, this all felt like some terrible prank. Her gaze fell back onto the box by her side. Did she even want to open it? No. But she had to anyway.

Heart racing, she undid the latch and raised the lid. Inside, resting between soft cushions, was a small wooden carving of a bird, parts of it much more detailed than others. She let out an involuntary gasp at the sight. She’d never seen one before, but she immediately knew what it was.

An ertani.

Also known colloquially as a “spirit carving”, an ertani was not a joke. No, it was the farthest thing from a joke. An ertani was the formal Drayhadan means of proposing courtship. No Drayhadan would ever make an ertani if they didn’t mean it.

That stupid man. That stupid, boneheaded, infuriating man. What was she supposed to do about a proposal from a dead person? How was she supposed to feel about this?

She stood up and lifted the box over her head, ready to smash it to the ground. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears, feel her jaw clenched shut, her arm shaking. All she had to do was hurl the box downward. That was it. A rotation of the shoulder, followed by the elbow and the wrist for maximum velocity. A simple motion she’d done countless times before.

She couldn’t do it. Why couldn’t she do it?

Because this was Jaquet. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, as much as she hated it, she couldn’t deny the truth anymore. The man she’d spent so much time with, drinking, fighting, arguing; the man who’d used her and abandoned her with little more than a weak apology; the man who’d fought side by side with her for years. This one object was all she had left of those times. If she were to throw this away, she would be rejecting him forever. Not just his lying, not just his betrayal, but also his warmth, his laughter, and his steadfast presence, or all those times he’d taken an arrow for her, or blocked a blade coming at her, or pulled her out of the way of an incoming fireball.

Was that what she wanted? She’d had so few true friends in her life. Did she really want to throw away the memory of the one who in many ways had been her best? Did she really want to make herself even more alone?

No, she didn’t. She was already almost alone, and even though she claimed that she didn’t want such solitude, she kept working to isolate herself from the only friends she had left. Why was she pushing them away?

She sat back down, closing the box and setting it to the side.

The epiphany was like a ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds, casting her current actions in a whole new light. She could keep on her current course and find a job in Kutrad, or maybe the remains of Gustil. The situation there was surely chaos, and mercenaries could prosper in such an environment if they got lucky. But she’d be intentionally putting thousands of leagues between her and the only people left on this continent—or maybe even the world—who still cared about her. For what? Less pay and worse living conditions?

She still felt sincere anger at Lord Ferros, Sofie’s Earthling comrade, excuses about the Monster or no. But it wasn’t like she’d never worked for people she hated before. She’d taken contracts from plenty of arrogant, selfish, spoiled aristocrats and the like throughout her career as a mercenary. Many had done things just as bad, if not worse, than the stories she’d heard about Blake, and that hadn’t stopped her then. Why should it stop her now?

It wouldn’t, she decided. She’d been a fool, disregarding the importance of friendship in her life, but Jaquet’s death had shown her the truth. So, Arlette decided to keep her friends close, while she still had the power to do so. She’d accept the offer of employment, or she’d give it a try, at least. She’d heard tales of Otharia for decades, all of them bad, but if Sofie could stand living there, then it surely couldn’t be that terrible, right? What was the worst that could happen?

“Pari, no!”

A sharp boom echoed across the camp.