The charred frames of outskirt buildings burned down to embers was what mostly lit up the field. The moon was barely a string in the sky, it wasn’t the darkest night of the month as it is still possible to make out vague shapes, but what made the stars shine previously was what made the ground black, the engulfing darkness created by the impending new moon.

Despite the nighttime, the siege was still reaching a feverish high, the clashing of metal, the shouts of men and women, along with their screams sang throughout the land.

The main altercation was happening at the main gate. The great wooden door slab splintered and toppled over, while hundreds of people fought around the narrow entrance, bodies piling up relentlessly, slick with blood until the footing was functionally uneven ice.

Around the walls, ladders lay strewn across the dirt, many of them toppled over by defenders scurrying frantically around the top of the wall to match the encirclement of forces attempting to breach over the wall, all while being rained down upon by various stray arrows.

“Looks like we aren’t going to be able to rest for a while.” Celestia comments.

"What are we going to do with these bodies?" I then ask. The mountain we were on was a perfect vantage point for the entire region, so as expected, there were a few enemy soldiers scouting out on top. About a dozen corpses lay behind us, some of their throats slashed from Rainel, some of their heads caved in from Celestia, a pretty gruesome scene even for my standards.

The three of us stare at the field of blood and bodies.

"We leave them to be buried and mourned when they're found." Rainel nods. "Also, if we come across a situation like this again, we should try to leave one of them alive for information's sake."

Celestia and I both glance behind our shoulders at a nearby tree after he says this. Rainel notices this and asks inquisitively. "Don't tell me there's someone hiding there?"

"FUCK!" A man yells hoarsely before desperately trying to scramble away. I raise my hand and create a brief but sharp backdraft, knocking him off his feet. Celestia leaps out from the bush and is on him in a flash pinning him against the ground with one hand.

"Huh, how did you two notice him and I didn't?" Rainel slowly walks up to the scared soldier.

"I replaced the mountain's air with my Tetsu's air a while ago. He was staying pretty quiet for a while but unfortunately no-one can hold their breath forever. " I say to him.

And I guess Celestia has her ways.

The man cowers in fear. "Well, don't be too scared, we're going to leave you alive after all." Celestia smiles at the whimpering man.

"No you should be scared." Rainel without hesitation draws one of his swords and plunges it into the soldier's calf.

Celestia immediately covers his mouth with her hand to muffled screaming, holding his head steady as he writhes and whips around in pain.

"Man, I thought I was a bad person." Celestia remarks holding the man steady.

"You know we can't let him go back after seeing the three of us. So I'll take away his ability to walk. Nothing personal."

"I don't mind, I'm interested in what kind of strategies they'll prepare against us." Celestia replies in typical fashion.

"Whatever you say." Rainel looks away, smartly ignoring one of Celestia's many ruses.

Celestia grins then leans down to the soldier's face. "So? What kinda strategies are they preparing against us?" She then makes an O shape with her mouth after seeing his expression. "Gathered your wits already have ya?"

His eyes were closed shut and his eyebrows were furrowed clearly in fury. "Kill me now." He clenches his teeth in both pain and anger.

Rainel leans down as well. "How about you do it? Bite off your own tongue and kill yourself.”

The man furiously stares at Rainel, his breathing getting faster and more frantic by the second. He opens his mouth, sticking his tongue between his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut. He raises his teeth, hesitates, then drops them before raising them again.

"Thirty seconds have passed." Rainel mentions it casually.

"AH!" The man screams in adrenaline and clamps down on his tongue, blood bursting out and dribbling down his chin, but his teeth don't go through, he hesitated, didn't put all of his Anku into it.

The screams of adrenaline quickly turn to pain as the man begins wailing, unable to follow through the entire thing. "No! No, I'll tell you everything I know, please, I want to see my family again." The man says with tears streaking down his eyes.

"Don't we all." Rainel gets up and kicks a branch, he releases he fist. "Right, let's get going shall we." Rainel sheathes his sword and begins walking towards the city.

Celestia hoists the soldier off the ground. "You're going to be a traitor if you do this, you know? Even if you survive you won't be welcomed back to Oliviand."

"T-That's okay, I'll take my wife and daughter and sail for Zlitia, we don't have to worry about anything there."

"I wouldn’t say that." Rainel murmurs under his breath as the three of us begin slowly descending the hill.

"Rainel." After a while, I suddenly speak up after being quiet the entire time.

"What is it?"

"We shouldn't have killed the people on that hill there."

"Are you still caring about that good person bad person clownery?" Rainel raises an eyebrow.

"No, no, I left that a while ago. I learned this from my experiences as a prince. When in war, you should never kill your enemies." I reiterate.

"You sound very naive."

"No, no, that's the thing. What's a bigger burden, an injured soldier or a dead one?"

"What's more dangerous, a soldier who knows he's not going to die going into battle, or one who has the fear of God struck inside him?" Rainel immediately counters back. "If they know that they're going against a bunch of pacifists, they would've already slaughtered us all."

"Oh... well..."

"Look, I've been there before, but people soon discover that their convictions are not as strong as they think it is when they or someone they love is about to die." Rainel sighs.

"I don't think if you're held in such a dire situation that it can really be held against you whether you hold conviction or not." I reply in kind. "People are always reduced to their animal-like instincts. They won't be their true selves."

"The animal-like instincts are people's true selves."

"Gah, this conversation is pissing me off, talk about something else." Celestia interjects with an unexpected level of annoyance in her voice.

"What do you think about it?" I decide on poking the bear.

"I think that convictions make the world boring. They're annoying shits you can't get rid of. Not stuff that's even remotely fulfilling to keep."

"It's true that convictions are a concession of freedom, but if we only acted on our desires and nothing more, we would be no different than animals. Exchanging our short-term happiness for long term fulfillment is what makes us human." Rainel says, surprisingly into this dialogue.

"I'm happy living like an animal. I don't need long-term happiness as long as I stay happy for the rest of my life." Celestia turns her head towards Rainel.

"I'd be surprised if you feel that way forever. Sometimes, it feels nice not being a slave to that annoying voice inside your head commanding you to accommodate your desires."

"What the hell even is freedom then?" Celestia snorts.

“Freedom doesn’t exist.” Rainel says dourly. “Except when you’re dead maybe.”

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I look up to the night sky, thinking about Bythem and Lydia, and then the deserter. I look down at my palm, imagining blood flowing through the fingers, Tetsu circulating around my body. Thinking and pondering, but no matter how I approach the thought process I hit the same brick wall.

What are my convictions anymore?

“Hey, what’s your name?” Rainel’s voice breaks through my mindscape.

I return to reality to find nobody standing around me. I look around and realize that the two of them had gone up ahead to the top of the hill, overlooking the siege.

Shouldn’t zone out like that… I shake my head and run up to rejoin them.

”My name is Bobt.” The soldier says.

”Alright Bobt, I have two questions. First of all, how much time do we have on this hill before someone comes to investigate? You must have been asked to report across certain intervals correct?”

“Yes. Every hour, one of us must return and tell them that everything’s okay. We did our last report… maybe twenty minutes ago?”

For a split second Rainel flicks his eyes to the dagger wound in the soldier’s thigh before turning back. Somehow, I know exactly what he thought of at that moment.

“I don’t care for an estimate, where is the hourglass itself? Or some other time keeping device” Rainel then says, showing off his experience.

“What hourglass? We have an hourgla—?” He doesn’t even finish his sentence before Rainel drops him and begins searching through the corpses pockets.

“Celestia help me search. Cain, watch him.” He says without skipping a beat.

“It’s on him.” Celestia points immediately to one of the bodies. “Come on? You can’t hear the sand?”

Rainel glares at her before digging through the body’s shirt, taking the hourglass out, watching the sand resume dripping through after being tilted off its side.

”This looks like it’s 50 minutes through, I killed this man three minutes ago, which means we have around… seven or six minutes.” He says. “Well, they may give a couple minutes more for leeway.” He reaches out and grabs the soldier with a sudden stroke of violence, specifically dragging his wound across the grainy ground. “Hoping your friends find you?”

“No! No! I swear that wasn’t my intention.” He flinches away from Rainel.

”We can call it an honest mistake. For now, Cain, can you hide us with that thing you can do?” Celestia tries cooling Rainel down.

That thing I can do? Oh.

“That’s a bit shameless of you no?” I then say. I show her once…

“Why is that?” Celestia tilts her head curiously.

“Nothing…” Rainel, can you bring Bobt close? I open my mouth to say, but… I move myself close instead.

Celestia’s gaze briefly flicks towards me as I do this. She then walks over till all of us were huddling together.

“What are you doing?” Rainel asks.

”Making us invisible. Don’t be alarmed when things around you go completely dark, light will bend around us.” I say as the cone of air around us begins to blur, gradually dimming down.

I look at my own hand as it dims further and further, till it fades into the pure blackness surrounding us.

“Holy shit…” Rainel murmurs, probably never had experienced the abject absence of light like this before. Coupled with auditory deprivation, this was even considered a form of torture under Zona law back home.

“Isn’t this quite dangerous? Not being able to see anything?” He asks.

“I can still sense and see the things arou-ound us.” Celestia’s shoulder bumps into my chest mid-sentence.

“Whoops.”

“But I can leave holes of vision if necessary. Just know that they’ll be able to see through those gaps as well.” I continue.

“… Ok, maybe not then.” Rainel says hesitantly. “Then what do we want to do while we’re in this space?”

Actually that’s a good question. I kinda just followed Celestia’s directions without a second thought.

“Well, we should take a moment to plan things and get on the same page.” She says. “And we can get away with some spying as well, so why not?”

The three of us go silent, the only thing audible being the heavy breathing of Bobt still being held against the ground by Rainel.

“Can they hear us?” Rainel asks.

“No.” I say curtly. “We’ll be able to hear them however.”

“How is that possible?” Rainel asks.

“… I direct all the inside sound into the ground. Outside sound is funneled towards the top.” I say after some hesitation.

“Huh.” Rainel says then goes silent.

…

I guess he was just curious.

“Hold on, are you…” Bobt begins.

“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.” Rainel warns, causing him to shut up promptly. “By the way Mr. Bobt. Here was my second question.” Rainel continues from the previous conversation thread. “Give me the logistics of the siege, setup, schedule… Start with the schedule. Are they rotating forces? Have they been fighting since the very beginning, no rest?”

”It’s… We’ve been on a rotating schedule, yes.”

Rainel snorts. “Sounds like you guys have been getting too comfortable. How often do the forces switch out?” Rainel then asks.

“Dawn and dusk, the forces are split up in half. We switch every time the sun rises and falls.”

”Downtime during switch?”

“I think… It was around thirty minutes last time.”

“Hmm… Who’s the leading commander?”

“I… I don’t know.”

”What? Are they trying to keep that a secret or something?” Rainel says in an annoyed tone.

”No, I don’t think so… I was j-just, never told who it was.”

“You mean… Okay I understand.”

Then Rainel kills him.

I couldn’t see how he did it, but I could sense that Bobt just died without making a sound. His breathing had completely stopped, and I could hear the sound of… Spurting blood. My skin grows a bit cold. I hold my breath for a couple seconds and close my eyes, returning my mind to center.

“Hey… Rainel did you just…” Celestia also hears it. “But why?”

“I’m not taking care of a pissfooted footsoldier who knows practically nothing for all our time here. Hell, even I know more about what’s going on than him from leaked intel alone.”

“But you… Okay. I don’t care. Do whatever.” Celestia gives up on her thought.

“Okay, so whaat’s our next step?” My voice lightly cracks, best to move on quickly before I think about it any longer.

“How about Cain first, do you have any ideas?” Rainel says. “Everything I’m thinking of right now is shaky at best, and your abilities are a great deal more versatile than mine.”

“I can sneak the three of us inside the capital with relative safety. Let them know about our presence and we can all work together to do something, the more the better.” I say. “Ah-”

“Sounds good to me. What about you Celestia? Hiding here was your idea, so do you want to stay a bit longer or go now?” Rainel says.

…

“Celestia?”

“She stepped out right before you said that.” I reveal.

Rainel simply sighs before running out. I close the barrier, morbidly glancing at the ground for a brief moment before following them, my curiosity to the type of wound that causes instant death being answered.

I drift through the trees, following the overlapping sound of pounding footsteps, before stopping at another gruesome scene of Rainel and Celestia clashing with a group of men.

I instinctually open my palms, watching the two of them go at it, but then lower them.

It was agreed upon that I don’t fight until absolutely necessary to avoid revealing our hand too soon.

But sometimes.

“He’s with them and unarmed! Get em!” One man shouts and charges me, a couple people turn their heads to my presence, but quickly switch focus as Rainel and Celestia immediately pounce on those who looked at me, with the exception of the first person who was charging at me.

I flick my fingers, creating a sharp whistling noise that travels to head height. As the man falls over I quickly and carefully reach out, grabbing the sword falling from his hand and holding it against his neck, letting some of the blood coat the edge before swinging upwards, pretending that I’d just sliced his neck open.

Good thing I’ve had some practice. I think grimly as I zone out, not bothering to try to follow the fight and waste precious mental energy.

I blink once as Rainel runs through the last person with his sword, who was desperately trying to sprint away.

“What the hell are you doing?!” He turns to Celestia and yells.

“I’m sorry. I apologize. I felt agitated, so I wanted to let off some steam.” Celestia says despite still having a sour look on her face.

“And did it help?” I ask, noticing this.

... For a brief second, Celestia held a completely blank expression.

“Yes.”

“Please, stop talking. We are much closer to the main camp and need to get out of here now.” Rainel says with a glare specifically directed towards Celestia. He silently mouths after. Follow my directions.

“Lead the way, captain.” She says sarcastically.

“Okay, follow Cain into the city then, let’s go now.”

No more talking, the three of us quickly and efficiently spring into action.