The sound of a slap sounded across the room, its meaty noise followed quickly by an excruciatingly long sigh. Sofia stared at the game of Battle Square in front of her, already being reset by snow-white fingers who showed no sign of remorse. She considered herself a rather good player tempered by the long winter nights spent with her brothers playing various versions of Square. Yet if someone was watching their games she would have looked like a greenhorn amateur who had just learned the rules of the game.
"Lady Siri, is this really your first time playing this variation of Square?"
"Yes." The high noble opposite to her crossed her thin arms in front of herself and scratched at the serpentine mark coiled around both of her forearms in a sort of impatient way.
"I see..." Sofia breathed in deeply trying not to give out the noble for blatantly lying to her face.
The blonde woman wanted to start introducing the subject of her family to the Firmusian, still bound by honour to at least try to gain help. Throwing her plan into the gutter the girl had spotted the game board on the shelf shortly after Annette had left the room and one thing led to another, at the end of that path Sofia stared at the pristine game board ready to grant her brain another beating.
The game of Square and its many variations were often described as 'bloodless battles' as they required a deep understanding of strategy and an ability to foresee the situation on the board in the future to be considered good which mirrored the responsibilities put on a commander's shoulders without any of the consequences of failure. Given the age of the game itself, it had led people to come up with believes about people from the certain ways of playing the game. A player who carefully lingered on each move he made with careful consideration would be a defensive general and such.
If this were true, Sofia would never want to be a soldier in Lady Siri's army. To her benefit, the mage general's wins were not the result of her simply being lucky like many who simply let their pieces charge forward. The lying Firmusian was a strange type of player, ready to sacrifice seemingly endless amounts of pieces for no desirable reason at all before suddenly the situation on the board could be only described as a bloodbath. The girl's seemingly pointless sacrificing only revealing their true purpose when it was too late, Sofia's front-line and cavalry pushed to overextended leaving her headquarters and back-line defenseless against Kia's counter attack.
"Lady Siri, if I may ask. I understand that this is a game but if given a command would you act in the same way you act on the board?" The girl sighed as if something was trying her out.
"No, this game and managing an army are two different domains with little overlap between them?" The pale cryomancer tilted her head to the side.
"So you wouldn't sacrifice your soldiers then?" Sofia felt her heart warming up a little as her assumptions were wrong about the girl. She is only this cold when with strangers.
"But that's the only correct way of waging war?" Lady Siri's motonote voice seemed to be on the verge of utter confusion and her eyes watched the frontierwomen like a murderer.
Stolen novel; please report.
Why are you this way? Not fair, you're the bloody-handed one in this scenario!
"That's certainly not the way not even close. Only beastmen and vagabonds make war like this Siri." Again Sofia's brain rattled inside her skull as she watched Lady Siri's eyes widen and what felt like a hint of a smile appeared on her lips.
"Then you kill more of your own than I do. There is no way stopping in the midst of an attack, allowing the enemy to regroup and then attacking again is more efficient," The girl had leaned over with what seemed was a morbid curiosity as she spoke, as if repeating something she had heard thousands of times. "Speed is the key to victory and it necessitates that certain taboos needed to be lifted and circumnavigated. Therefore a quick and brutal war in which the sole goal is to crush an enemy before it can adapt and reorganised minimises the loss of life." The girl said the last word ending with a slight frown before waiting for Sofia to respond, curious to her response.
How could being brutal minimise loss of life?
Sofia carefully tried to follow the girl's words finding it strangely familiar yet disgusting. A similar logic went with hunting demi-humans but that meant that the girl considered fighting the enemies of humanity and other humans on the same level. This was an almost incomprehensible thing for the Junker to understand as everyone knew that when fighting other humans, which shouldn't even really be happening in the first place, you couldn't use the most effective tactics. There was an honour to be gained or lost in fighting fellow humans and the goal wasn't simply to murder the other side the fastest. This went to as far as to saving the enemy after the battle and ransoming them back.
Sofia could imagine a scenario where a hill fortified and garrisoned by the enemy would have been attacked by the fair noble, taking casualties which would have caused other commanders to stop yet she still pressed on. If Lady Siri predicted that hill costed six hundred men to take but the benefits of gaining it outweighed the price, six hundred men would lose their lives that very day.
The most uncomfortable thing for Sofia was that she didn't think that the delicate girl was saying this because she was cruel. Callous, definitely but not cruel. There was a sort of cold uncaring feeling that one heeded out of instinct but, where it felt alien and unhuman to the blonde noble.
"-"
Before Sofia could say anything the bronze doorknob turned causing both of the women to turn in its direction. Annette emerged from the outside and after Lady Siri turned her back toward Sofia she gestured to her Lady it was time to bring the Northerner back.
"War is awful." She whispered causing the necromancer's eyes to once again show her disagreement. Fortunately for the Junker scion's hope in humanity, the Blackworm realised what time it was, and as if her wand was whirled in front of her face she lost interest in continuing the topic and stood up from her chair.
The sound of heels hitting the venerable stone filled the staircase before being muted as they stepped on a soft carpet. The building which housed Lady Blackworm had already been repaired from her previous accident. Funnily enough the closer they got to the building the stranger the high noble became. The noble's emotionless mask cracked bit by bit exposing a disoriented girl who observed the world with jerky movements before hesitation took hold in her heart. Since the morning Lady Siri had walked shoulder to shoulder with her but now, the girl skittishly weaved between being too close to the Junker and as far away as she could.
"My favourite." Sofia heard the Blackworm whisper as the door to her room loomed over them like some sort of dungeon boss. She turned toward the high noble finding two differently coloured eyes staring at her with concern?
Why is she looking at me like that?
Knocking at the door, Sofia felt a powerful aura release from behind the thick painted piece of wood. With a quiet click, the door opened and another glowing pair of eyes began to stare at the scion of House Junker
Sofia suddenly felt an undiscardable feeling of a sword hanging above her neck, and whether it fell or not was being decided by the smallest whim of faith.
"Why?" The simultaneously beautiful and horrifying voice of Iris quietly began to cut the rope holding the sword as her eyes glued on the Blackworm's new clothes.
Leaving Sofia's side Lady Siri stepped forward toward the room resembling the most preciously naive maiden in existence rather than the cold and ruthless executioner from only moments ago. Like a soup left for too long over the fire, the towering elf exploded with energy. With one powerful thrust, she snatched the maiden and pulled her inside.
In the blink of an eye, Sofia found herself standing in front of a closed door idly wondering if the soup would burn and what it would look like before realising Lady Siri’s sudden disappearance. The muscles on her neck regrettably relaxed as she had the feeling that the sword hanging above her had landed on the girl.