King Lemings trembled in rage as he awaited Tronan’s response.
“Soldiers encountered Lady Reece on Hellom Pass,” General Tronan said hesitantly.
“And you let her get away?!” King Lemings stood up in anger.
“The soldiers had no choice,” General Tronan said.
“Excuses!” King Lemings grabbed a goblet off his side table and threw it across the audience chamber, causing it to crash when it hit the wall and reverberate as it bounced off the floor. “This is simple incompetence! Where were the soldiers?”
General Tronon closed his eyes. “They were there.”
King Lemings fumed, nostrils flaring as he stared down his general. “Wh~at?” he smacked.
“Twenty thousand soldiers were stationed on the pass,” General Tronon said. “I brought them there before reconnecting with the main force. Scouts returned the next day and found an unknown number dead.”
“Why don’t you know!”
“Because they retreated, Your Majesty,” General Tronon said solemnly.
“Retreated? They retreated?!”
“Your Majesty…. Trusted soldiers reported that over two miles of brush had burned. Massive gashes marked the landscape. It was a massacre.”
“How many soldiers have we lost?”
“Twelve thousand returned; three thousand are missing.”
“Total.”
“Twenty thousand, including the captured.”
King Lemings’s body cooled, and he found himself taking small steps back until his calves bumped against the throne, and he fell. “How…?” he asked.
“I believe….” General Tronon paused, looking at the wall behind King Lemings in thought. “The summonees they sent us…. I believe they’ve had their cores cracked. It’s the only explanation.”
“So they’re lying?”
“Perhaps. But not about their power. Their cores are tainted, and we’ve known that. The question is whether they’ve lied about knowing their cores were cracked. We believe they’ve been lying—that’s why they’re not on the front lines.”
King Lemings gripped his armrests. “Then find out.”
“And if they were lying?”
The king’s nose scrunched in. “Do you trust them to fight?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then find out and let me know. If they’re trustworthy, take them with you.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. In the meantime, where would you like me?”
“I want you to appraise Lady Reece with your own eyes. Do not attack unless you are confident that you can win.”
“I will leave at once,” General Tronon said.
When the man left, King Lemings sat in silence, contemplating what was happening. A small group riding silver gliders had captured fifteen thousand soldiers and defeated a force of twenty thousand during an ambush. This wasn’t a war—it was a massacre. For the first time, he doubted his forces and wondered what he would do if Lady Reece proved as powerful as reports declared. Would he fight? Or would he negotiate? That was the question he had to decide—and fast.
2
Sara swirled a bottle of wine in her hand, uncorked yet undrunk, laughing at her. Fruit and bacteria—that’s all it was. Yet somehow, it became a crutch that never seemed to help but always convinced her that it did. Without it, it was harder to sleep, and when she did sleep, she woke up in cold sweats. The night terrors didn’t happen every night, but they happened often enough to make her fear sleep. It was like a lottery machine where each missed attempt built anticipation and anxiety, wondering when it would happen next. It was awful—and this night would be harder than the rest.
Wiles and Jennifer had died, breaking her track record for keeping the “good guys” alive. That hurt more than the deaths themselves. She had watched so many fatalities and heartbreaks that she had grown numb to it, leaving those feelings locked aside. Many would find that callous, but it was a simple fact that she couldn’t get scarred like other people could. So, while she cared deeply about her students and heroes, she couldn’t feel the depths of the pain that others felt toward them.
That said, she was moved. As always, she had stood in front of the deceased’s bodies (which were healed and looked like they were just sleeping), telling the other heroes that they died valiantly and for a just cause despite her causing it. And as always, people got lost in the celebration of their friends’ lives, swapping stories about the strangest—and most irrelevant—of things, stupid events that only seemed to come to people once the person had died. Embarrassing moments, bizarre encounters, sudden outbursts of confidence. It turned out Wiles had gotten into a fight in middle school. Got the shit kicked out of him, but he landed a solid crack on a bully’s nose and got suspended for it. Likewise, Jen was having a bad day in computer lab at the start of middle school, so she unplugged the computers in the lab multiple times, blaming her computer for the reason that she couldn’t write. Things like these weren’t particularly exciting when a person was alive, but they meant everything after death, proof of their courageousness—and rebelliousness. The heroes laughed and drank wine between tears, hugging each other. And Sara was drawn in with them, learning about these people she knew little of—wishing them more while they were still alive. Now, she was swirling a bottle of wine in front of her, wondering if she should drink it just to prove the depth of her caring—wondering if that was just another excuse.
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“Can I sit with you?” Sara turned and found Andy staring at her with a nervous expression.
“Sure,” she said.
He sat, and they shared a silence for a couple of minutes before he found the words to say.
“I understand now,” he said.
Sara let out a protracted sigh. “I wish you didn’t.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.” Sara looked at the blood-red moon, almost making its rise over Reemada. “We were summoned here to fight. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t something any of us asked for. Yet here we are.”
Andy swallowed and looked at her bottle of wine, then looked away. “Does that stuff help?”
“No~pe. But it helps you pretend, and mindset is everything.”
“I see….” He sat for another ten minutes before asking the question on everyone’s mind: “What’s next?”
Sara thought about it for thirty seconds, communicating her thoughts with her shoulders and deep breaths. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “That’s up to you.”
“It’s on me?” Andy chuckled bitterly.
“All of you.”
“I see…. What would you do?”
“I’d make them pay for this,” she said. “These traps aren’t infinite, so I’d go onto their turf and blitz another three garrisons. We don’t have to worry about their soldiers and civilians, so I would just go, crushing them as quickly and mercilessly as I could for the next two days until they finally got the message: you shouldn’t fuck with us.” Her arms trembled, and all those locked-away emotions burst like a dam, making her realize that the scars didn’t go away—they just built like a pressure cooker until they finally burst.
Andy’s body trembled, too. “That’s what I want. That’s what Darius wants. Hell, that’s what we all want. But….”
“Silver gliders,” she completed. Most of them died or escaped. There were still six, but that wasn’t nearly enough.
“Yeah,” he said. “So what do we do?”
Sara mulled it over. “I’m sure many people would like to go home. We could send a message to soldiers in Lemora, telling them to come pick up the heroes in Olam. We’ll travel there as a group. Two can fly ahead and drop people off and then return. It’ll take a full day to go back and forth, but we can pull it off.” Olam was the last city they passed through before making their way to Hellom Pass. It wasn’t far away—by silver glider. But with only three silver gliders available, two had to go to Olam (with two riders), drop off the extras, and come back. Sara would stay with the original group. It was a pain.
Andy’s eyes flickered with dark enthusiasm as he nodded his head subtly. “Then that’s what I’ll push to do.”
And that’s what they did. The next day, she announced her plan, and the others agreed—hesitantly. To ensure consensus, they decided that Andy, Darius, and Helen (who only agreed because Andy insisted) would go, and Will, Elizabeth, and the rest would return to Olam. Lemoran troops would then send reinforcements and silver gliders. Yet luck was on their side. When they returned to Olam, there were enough silver gliders for the heroes, so on the second pass, the four silver gliders turned to eight, and they picked everyone up on the next trip.
Then, after sending word to Lemora, they took off for Hellom Pass—the location where they were ambushed, preparing for hell.
3
Cloudy skies passed over the skies when Sara and the strike team reached Hellom Pass, the place of the ambush. Instead of passing the area from a low altitude, they shot toward the heavens, circling the area, searching for soldiers before dropping lower to examine the rocks. There were large sections of loose rock and gravel that didn’t belong to the area.
[So that’s how they did it,] Sara thought. They must’ve carved out the land, drawn massive arrays with temporary paint, and covered the area with gravel. But that wasn’t all. Since Hellom Pass was the border between the Escaran and Lemings kingdoms, margraves on both sides were tasked with defending it and reporting on it. If there was a large-scale operation setting up a trap, there were underground dealings, treasonable actions, or both. It was despicable.
Sara used God’s Eyes to search the area and found that she couldn’t see the large gashes she left in the ground with Qualth. That meant that the Lemings Kingdom used sophisticated magic to deceive divination pulses—which was impressive. Whatever it was, the physical barrier wouldn’t work without dozens of mages feeding all their mana and mana-rich resources into it. So Sara’s team wouldn’t be trapped by the barrier this time. With that in mind, she turned to her team members. “Let’s go.”
4
Sara released the God’s Eyes divination spell the instant she crossed the barrier and found dozens of soldiers scouring the area. The instant she saw them, she lifted her hand and summoned a massive meteor. It lifted the rocks for a hundred yards, making them snap together in a sphere. Then the mass lit on fire, and she activated a massive amplification spell.
“Soldiers of the Lemings Kingdom!” Sara yelled. “My name is Lady Reece, head advisor and The Hero for the true blood heir of the Escaran Kingdom, Alecov Escar—and I’m here to slaughter your army until you concede!” she declared. “Take this message to your superiors and let them bring their worst. It’ll make it faster!” She released the meteor at the largest grouping of soldiers, and the area it struck exploded in an inferno that spread black smoke for ten miles.
“Was it wise to tell people we were coming?” Darius asked.
“We’re not here to win the war,” Sara said. “We’re here to prove just how fucked they are when we actually arrive.” She smiled grimly and released another divination pulse to watch the soldiers run away. “Let’s go. We’re hitting two cities before we sleep.”
5
Queen Markon’s forces approached Lemora from the south, shocked to find all the cities and towns abandoned.
6
Raul watched the Erikin forest in the west burn with the other heroes. It felt disturbing to start a massive forest fire spreading for miles, but as he listened to soldiers screaming as they ran away, he knew that their message was getting through loud and clear.
7
Queen Markon’s eyes narrowed when she got the report about the abandoned cities.
8
King Quell’s fingers tapped on his armrest as he listened to the report about Raul’s forces pushing his forces back. “Are they all cowards?!” he yelled.
His advisor winced. “My Liege, I implore you to reconsider your appraisal.”
“Reconsider?!” he yelled. “My father would have killed all these cowards himself!” All of his troops had retreated, even during ambushes. It was unbelievable.
9
Sara and her strike force laid waste to three noble armies in two days, setting watch towers and battlefields ablaze. The Lemings Kingdom was ready for her, spreading out their soldiers and bringing ballistae, but it didn’t matter. Andy, Darius, and Helen sent wind blades and meteors crashing down on soldiers and collected their weapons, melting the shields and armor in bonfires. It was simple, gruesome work, but it was abruptly halted when they met General Tronton—and the dissidents.