“You don’t look like you’re all that happy, Mags. Wasn’t this what you wanted?”

The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows over the rolling hills and the sprawling encampments of the two armies. The air was thick with the scent of earth and sweat, mingling with the distant clamor of soldiers preparing for the day’s drills. Joanne along with other former members of the Claymores led groups around a marked-out track, Lyssa the werecat was in charge of a small subset of Arkk’s command-oriented forces who were learning tactics and strategy from the guest army, Al-Mir’s engineers poured over traditional siege weaponry that Cedric’s army had brought. Cedric’s army outnumbered Arkk’s by more than ten to one, leaving most of the guest army to fend for themselves. Some lifted large stones and rocks to train themselves, others were arranging into large shield walls, scattering, and then reforming in repeated drills, and cavalry soldiers were working with their horses.

Arkk stood at the edge of the makeshift training ground, his eyes scanning the rows of soldiers as they spared and practiced formations. Mags, the ostensible leader of Cedric’s army, leaned against a small wooden railing beside him. Cedric’s adjutant sighed as he looked out over the soldiers.

“You ever get an idea in your head?” Mags asked, lightly drumming his fingers against the railing. “That little spark of finally, I’ve figured out what I need to do?”

“I… suppose so?”

“So you get the idea, right?” Mags tapped his finger to his head. He moved his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers in the air as if he were directing people around. “And you start figuring out how to bring that idea to reality. You need to get some equipment, talk to some people, maneuver things around. It takes weeks, maybe longer. Day in and day out, working on little things here and there. And you start doing all that and it is a lot of work but you keep up the effort because you know the payoff is going to be worth it in the end.”

Arkk jolted as Mags brought his hands together, making a loud thunderclap. A few of the nearby training soldiers even paused to look in their direction.

“Then something happens. Something outside your control. And it all falls to pieces.” Mags let his arms drop to his sides as he slumped against the railing once more. “All that effort gone to waste. That’s about what I’m feeling right now.”

“Ah… Well, I’m sorry your boss ruined your plans to stage an uprising,” Arkk said, his tone flat.

“Oh, no need to apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Right,” Arkk said, shaking his head.

He wondered if Cedric knew that his chief adjutant had been the one egging on the soldiers dissatisfied with being sidelined. When Arkk had first told Mags of his meeting with Cedric, the adjutant had gone on an angry rant about Cedric always dragging him down and keeping him from his fun. He wanted to be the one in charge. When he first arrived, he even wanted the fortress handed over to him. Now, he was just depressed.

Arkk had sent a missive to the Prince informing him of that fact. He could only hope that the Prince would see to removing the man from his position.

“Maybe next time?” Arkk offered.

“Maybe. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing right now,” Mags said in a dejected tone of voice. He looked up at Arkk, then shifted his eyes to look over Arkk’s shoulder. A grin slowly spread across his face. “If there is anything to cheer me up, it’ll be that,” he said.

Turning, Arkk spotted a full three squads of orcs, fully armored in the shadow gear. They carried long scythes, these ones made of wood for training purposes. The real ones were too deadly.

Taking his eyes off the Black Knights, Arkk noted a certain air falling over the training grounds. It was like a ripple spreading out from those closest, who spotted the orcs first. Everyone stopped what they were doing, setting down weights and slowing their jogs. It didn’t surprise Arkk. Word had spread of Dakka’s unarmed victory over four of the army’s best. Everyone would obviously love to get a look at the shadow-armored knights that boasted such strength.

“Looking forward to your own men getting beat down again?” Arkk asked. The group training would begin shortly. This time, rather than unarmed and alone, the Black Knights would be fighting as a team against a team of opponents with wooden training weapons.

Finding out just how many soldiers the average Black Knight could handle at once would be another good reason to have done this.

“You have no idea,” Mags said, practically squirming with glee. “There are few things I love more than watching cocky men get their pride beaten out of them.”

“Even if they’re your men?”

“No matter who wins, someone’s pride is going home in tatters. Whose doesn’t matter.”

Arkk hummed, frowning at the rotund man. The adjutant, Arkk was swiftly coming to understand, was not a pleasant person by any stretch of the word. He didn’t know what Prince Cedric saw in the man to make him worth keeping around. Perhaps he had a brilliant tactical mind or just had been a childhood friend of some kind.

Arkk found him creepy. If it were up to him, Mags would have been on the first carriage back to Cliff. As it was, he didn’t have much choice but to put up with the man.

“You think your men have come up with any strategies to beat mine?”

“I’m sure those who faced your orc the first time around went around telling exaggerated tales to try to save face,” Mags said. His words made him sound as if he wasn’t quite sure but his tone was confident. He probably knew exactly what the men who fought Dakka had told everyone else. “Maybe they’ll be overly prepared, taking those exaggerations in mind.”

Arkk hummed again, a simple note of acknowledgment if not agreement. He was not quite so sure of the outcome. The Black Knight armor made them exceedingly resistant to any threats that might crop up in regular combat. At the same time, they would be outnumbered and were lacking their usual weapons. Armor alone wasn’t enough to win a battle.

But this was just training. Winning wasn’t the objective. Learning was.

However it ended up, Arkk figured he would hear about it later. Whether that be through complaints or cheers. For now, he pushed off the railing.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“You aren’t sticking around to watch?” Mags asked. He sounded disappointed.

“There is far too much to do. I only stopped by to make sure no real fights had broken out. I’ll check in a few more times throughout the day.” Turning, he started walking, giving Mags a lazy wave over his shoulder before teleporting straight to the base of the Elmshadow tower once he was out of sight.

Given that nobody wanted to traverse a million stairs every day, the tower was mostly deserted. With the reconstruction effort inside Elmshadow’s walls, there was room for everyone in his employ around the city proper, though they were mostly concentrated at the site of the former keep and garrison since that was closest to the tower. It was all claimed territory under his control, allowing him free actions within, but he had been avoiding using his abilities too openly outside the tower if only to provide some semblance of privacy to his employees.

Priscilla stood stooped, glaring downward with her iced-over eyes. Hale stood opposite, giving the dragonoid an equally fierce glare. Leda floated between them, palms out while frantically looking around for any sign of help. Unfortunately, even the base of the tower was mostly deserted today with those drills going on.

The few people walking around took one look at an angry dragonoid and decided that being anywhere else was by far the healthiest action they could take.

Arkk stayed back for a moment, watching with a frown as he wondered just what Hale and Priscilla might be arguing over.

It had been a few weeks since Hale requested relocation to Leda’s tower, temporarily, to try to heal some lingering injuries Priscilla had suffered at the hands of the avatar during the battle of Elmshadow.

The formerly little girl had certainly had a growth spurt in that time. She was still small, but no longer childlike. Priscilla was a bit shorter than Arkk—not including her wings—and Hale was now almost the same height. As Arkk stared, he couldn’t help but feel as if there was something else off about Hale. He couldn’t quite place what that something was. It didn’t help that she wore a thick long coat made from dark green scales that concealed her whole body. Matching gloves hid her hands. Only her face was visible.

If not for her hair still being pulled off into the twin side-tails, Arkk might not have recognized her on sight.

Hale shouted something at Priscilla and the dragonoid snapped back. Arkk sighed and decided to intervene before his best healer turned Priscilla into a molten blob of flesh.

“—didn’t tell me it would be constantly cold. Why is it constantly cold? I thought the ice was just a you thing.”

“You should feel blessed, you ungrateful little human—”

“Alright now,” Arkk said, teleporting each of them an extra step away from each other. “Is there a problem?”

Priscilla turned a snarl toward Arkk. Being fairly used to that, he didn’t even blink. She wasn’t seriously threatening him anyway. The link didn’t even come close to straining.

Hale looked away, almost like she was embarrassed. With a shiver, she pulled her coat tighter around herself. “It’s nothing. I’ll figure out how to fix it.”

“Fix? Fix what?”

“Nothing,” Hale said again, turning even further away.

Arkk raised an eyebrow. When Hale refused to speak any further, he turned to the other two.

Leda’s eyes, blazing red much like Arkk’s own, shifted back and forth as she averted her gaze. The little fairy looked from Hale to Priscilla and back again before the tension in her shoulders dropped. Her hover dipped down, making her appear even shorter than she was.

Priscilla just gave a derisive snort. Having spent whatever anger she had, she returned to the dismissive air she so often kept up. The dragonoid’s icy eyes stared off at nothing in particular.

Frowning to himself, Arkk wondered how hard he should press. None of the three were injured or otherwise hurt. He could tell that much. With everything going on here, he hadn’t paid all that much attention to what had been going on out at Leda’s tower.

Although both of them agreed to Hale heading out there to heal Priscilla, it was clear things hadn’t gone as perfectly as they had hoped. As long as both were in one piece, he supposed he didn’t need to press too hard if nobody wanted to talk about it. It would probably be best if they were separated for the time being.

“Hale. You’re going to be stationed here in Elmshadow for the foreseeable future. We’re likely to need your skills. Any issue with that?”

“Oh thank goodness…”

Arkk switched which of his eyebrows were raised, glancing back over the trio, before continuing. “I have a small group of casters that I would like you to train on the Flesh Weaving spell. Two of them might be skeletons.”

That got Hale’s attention. While Priscilla had stopped by Fortress Al-Mir every now and again, including after they connected the portal to the Necropolis, Hale was completely out of the loop. She stared up at him, eyes wide. Not frightened. Curious.

That was a good sign. “Denizens of the Necropolis,” Arkk said. “They aren’t here to fight with us but a few did agree to help heal. I think they only agreed because they thought it would be funny for skeletons to learn Flesh Weaving,” he added as a mumbled aside. “So, you’re going to teach it to them. And then…”

Arkk trailed off, staring at Hale. He narrowed his eyes as he looked directly at her eyes. They were a piercing, almost luminous blue-white. “You… used to have green eyes.”

Hale’s blue eyes widened further, this time in fear. She quickly turned her head away from him. Not quick enough. Her pupils, rounded but not quite circular, slid together to form thin slits.

“Hale,” Arkk said. “What have you done?”

The young woman balled her gloved hands. After a brief hesitation, she looked back and glared, this time in defiance. “I improved myself. Any issue with that?” she spat out. Her arms were trembling now. Despite her aggressive tone, Arkk knew Hale well enough to see the worry that aggression hid.

Arkk stepped back, raising his arms in a peaceful gesture. He wondered if it reflected poorly on him that his first thoughts were about how much Ilya was going to murder him and not whether or not Hale was alright.

He looked over her again, taking note of her increased height and more powerful stance. With her lips slightly parted, he could see teeth sharpened and elongated. Not enough to cause problems with speech or closing her mouth. It was like a lesser version of Priscilla’s teeth.

Turning, he found Priscilla grinning like a madwoman, like she had been waiting for this moment for a while now.

“Don’t look at me,” Priscilla said without losing a sliver of that grin. “She came to me for help. This was all her idea.”

“I’m fine. I’m better than fine. I can almost arm wrestle Priscilla—”

“Almost? You wish.” Priscilla jumped at Hale, arms out to tackle her to the ground. Arkk just teleported both of them away from each other before they could connect.

“Hale,” Arkk said, ignoring the dragonoid. “I honestly don’t know how to react to this. I’ll probably need to think it over. But I need to know, are you actually okay?”

Hale drew herself up, which only served to make her even a little taller than Arkk thought she was. Roughly equal with Priscilla. “I’m good,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “A bit cold, admittedly. I didn’t expect that. But I think I can get rid of it.”

“Ungrateful—”

“You,” Arkk said, tone far less kind as he pointed a finger at Priscilla, “I’ll have some words for later. I expect impulsive, brash, and stupid decisions from a child—”

“Hey!”

“—but I expect better from you.”

“Really?” Priscilla sneered. “You expect me to care if some human wants to chop her body to pieces and put it all back together?”

Arkk turned a questioning glance back at Hale.

“It wasn’t like that,” she quickly said.

Priscilla snorted. “You wanted me to cut off your arms and legs.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Hale repeated with a bit more desperation in her tone.

Arkk sighed. Closing his eyes, he teleported both of them away. Priscilla went down to the dungeons for a little time-out. Hale got sent to the top of the tower in one of the private quarters.

He would deal with them later.

Arms crossed, he looked at the fretting fairy.

“I…” She squeaked, paused, and tried to collect herself. “I didn’t know until I walked in on them working. I almost threw up,” she admitted, looking a little ill.

Arkk sighed again. “Believe it or not, I called you here to inform you of a little change in plans. Our good Prince has some ambitions, you see, and I’d like to help him fulfill his dreams. You’re going to help me help him.”

“The demon summoning Prince? That Prince?”

“That Prince.”

“But—”

“The Prince is utilizing Hawkwood in his efforts, so that is who we’ll assist the most. Nothing to worry about, Leda. Come,” Arkk said, leaving no room for argument.