They crossed blue-green streams and ventured through verdant valleys lush with growth. Merchant caravans bound for Sapphirica hauled raw materials, while those returning carried goods crafted in the capital’s guildhalls. Young men headed toward the disputed territories, guided by veterans, with women—sisters, lovers, or mothers—alongside them to serve as soldiers or camp followers. Pilgrims journeyed to Sapphirica to see the Divincor or try their skills in the guilds. Alexia even saw a carriage carrying a noble child to court or the Arcanium. She sighed, knowing that the same types of folk traveling the Sapphire Road were wandering the Ruby Road, all just parts of the machine like the wheels of a carriage. She too had her ugly part to play in this operation, to travel through beautiful lands, only to destroy lives of everyday people in distant lands just as beautiful.

On the fourth day, the rain came, painting Balbaraq’s sky black. Despite the storm, Alexia insisted on maintaining their pace, ignoring Maleon and Timmeck’s pleas to seek shelter. Instead, she conjured a charm that repelled the rain—a spell of her own creation.

Master Theos taught her that the combinations of the eight divine energies Alexia could harness were only limited by her imagination. If Alexia was confident in one thing, it was that her imagination was a fertile refuge against the pressures of a loud society. Thus, on a rainy day long ago when a downpour threatened to cancel her plans with Azi, Alexia first weaved Dalis’s water, Zafrir’s wind, and Leverith’s spirit into a shield that deflected the rain. Since then, Alexia and the princess had taken to reading beneath the acacia whenever it poured.

Today, the rain was diluvial, and not a soul had crossed their path until a distant scream pierced through the downpour. Urging her horse forward, Alexia raced along the muddy road, gripping her staff. Her focus sharpened as she rounded a bend and saw an ogre, eight feet tall, albino-skinned, squeezing the life out of a man.

Reacting instinctively, she drew on years of training. She filled her heart with spite and vengeance, drawing power from the blackness above as she pulled Balbaraq’s sky into her staff. In her mind’s eye, Alexia focused on a mnemonic, Fulmine, imagining the energy channeled into thin bolts of lightning that burst from her staff toward the ogre’s pink eyes. In less than three heartbeats, she gathered the power of the lightning god and solidified her cognitive focus. Combining emotion, thought, and the blessing of Divine Balbaraq, Alexia unleashed several lightning bolts that split through the air faster than arrows, striking the ogre in its runty head. Though the ogre’s resistant hide negated the damage, the beast dropped its victim and clutched its face.

Alexia dismounted Moonstrider, lowered her hood, and rolled her shoulders back, accentuating her feminine form. “Over here!” she shrieked, making her voice as high-pitched as she could.

Just as Cadlevin’s Bestiary warned, the ogre neglected the vulnerable man collapsed in the mud. Unable to resist her, its ear-splitting roar cut through the storm as it charged.

Alexia channeled the personality of Qoryxa, judging the ogre for his moral and physical ugliness, and strengthening her resolve to protect the defenseless man. Attuned to the Divine of Ice, she siphoned the little cold available on this hot day into her staff. Her mind recalled her Gelyxdar focus, a spell she created by associating imagery with the Volqori word for “cold that slows.” A field of frost flurried toward the beast, impeding its charge.

Her final spell required precision more than power. Recalling Cadlevin’s Bestiary, she honed in on the ogre’s lone vulnerability and started to summon Seraxa’s heat. She felt herself cunning, using this sophisticated combination of spells, and she harnessed the wrath of the Divine of Fire, drawing on the intense heat natural to a midsummer day. Flumenignyx, she thought, instantaneously visualizing the stream and swirl of the flames that would carry her wrath to its target.

“Flumenignyx!”

A jet of flame streamed from her staff, blasting into the ogre’s face, swirling around its skull and incinerating its eyes. The beast collapsed, its cries and flailing extinguishing before the rain could douse the flames.

Alexia drew Sunfire, her rapier, but decided against risking an approach. She fired a final bolt of lightning to ensure the ogre was truly dead. The blast thundered, and the ogre remained motionless.

Alexia stowed Sunfire and gripped Aurora with both hands as she nervously approached the man. “Hello?”

He groaned, looking up from a curled position, his breathing labored. He tried to speak, but the pain silenced him.

“Focus on your breathing,” she said gently, guiding him with calm breaths.

The ogre had crushed most of his ribs, but his spine was intact—a rare stroke of luck, if one could be lucky to be attacked by an ogre. No time now to ponder the oddity of an ogre showing restraint. In order to fix something, one needed to first understand how it worked, how it was broken, and how to make it whole again. Alexia recalled the accumulated mastery of years of lessons on anatomy, endless diagrams she had labeled, and folks she had treated, until every bone, muscle, organ, bloodriver, and nerve were committed to memory with perfect precision. Then she mapped the ogre’s attack against her pristine blueprint of the human body, visualizing which ribs had broken, the collapsed lungs, each impacted organ and bloodriver. Lastly, she turned her inner eye toward how she wanted each of these affected areas to function.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Her individualized focus prepared, Alexia channeled Leverith’s spirit into her staff. She attuned herself to the personality of the Divine of Love, fostering compassion for the wounded man. A brilliant, moon-blue glow emanated from Aurora’s tip and seeped into the man’s wounds. She guided the energy with precision, mending bone, sealing bloodrivers, and restoring breath. The process took about twenty turns, which was slow for Alexia because she had no bond with this stranger but still faster than even Master Bluebeam could achieve. When Alexia channeled Leverith, she felt like she was exactly who she should be doing exactly what she was supposed to do.

Besides, channeling Leverith made one feel what she called the effects of Leverith’s Loop. In her own master treatise, Alexia theorized that channeling Leverith and healing someone created a feedback loop that caused the healer and the healed to have increasingly positive feelings toward each other as the healer conjured loving thoughts for the healed to channel Leverith, the healing and the affect of coming into contact with Leverith’s spirit inspired loving feelings for the healer, then the positive, loving interactions that followed created an bond that fostered further positive feelings and thoughts and increased attunement to Leverith.

Caught in the emotions instilled by Leverith’s Loop, the man smiled adoringly at her and her shyness didn’t feel the need to escape contact with this reciprocal love.

“How do you feel now?” she asked.

Better than before,” he said, springing to his feet. “Yer Alexia! The Savior of Ten Cities!”

“The Savior of Ten Cities!” Maleon quipped theatrically. Sir Timmeck chuckled, but Alexia frowned at their mockery. She despised this privileged arrogance; people who weren’t taught shouldn’t be blamed for what they didn’t know.

The lingering effects of Leverith’s Loop softened her anxiety, freeing her to be herself without the usual self-consciousness. “You know my name. May I have yours?”

“Endrei of Fritjof,” he replied, voice heavy with sorrow.

Alexia remembered the town’s name from her maps. “Fritjof? Where the Sapphire Road crosses the Haliae River? How are things there?”

“Hard,” he admitted, barely meeting her gaze, eyes welling with tears. Her healing didn’t fix everything that was broken within him. “Ogres keep hittin’ us, and the Buccaneers do nothin’. So, I went lookin’ for their lair.”

“With naught but a knife?” Timmeck asked, speaking aloud what Alexia thought. “That was never going to end well, my man.”

Endrei bowed his head. “They took my Wyl.”

“How did they take your will?” Alexia asked.

“My son,” Endrei said, tears mixing with rain on his face. “They took ‘im. He’s all I had.”

Maleon nodded, compassion touching his usual callousness. “What matters if you die, as long as you hurt the monsters who took everything from you?”

Maleon's words echoed in Alexia's heart, as the heavy weight of grief settled on her chest.

“The Buccaneers do nothing!” Timmeck growled. “That’s unacceptable!”

“Constable says they’re too busy watchin’ the Grand Confluence,” Endrei said.

Alexia clenched her fist. They’d send her across the border to hurt the Ruby while Sapphires were being massacred in their own homes by beasts. Fighting for territory was pointless if she couldn’t keep Leveria’s people safe.

She steadied her breath. “It’s our duty to protect the people of Leveria. We will slay these ogres.”

“No,” Maleon said.

“Why not?” she asked, wishing the words had come with more authority.

“The risk is too great and it is not our responsibility to take it.” He eyed her with sympathy. “You can’t save everyone, Alexia. Learn that now, or it’ll be a painful lesson later.”

Alexia gaped at his heartlessness. This was the hero of the Southern Eagle? She wondered if there was anything left of that hero buried within this vengeful man. She had to believe there was, and that her compassion could bring it into the light.

She stepped closer, voice trembling but determined. “Maleon, I know there’s still a hero in you.” She forced a smile. “I want to see the man who broke the stone off the mountain.”

Maleon sneered. “You know nothing about me, princess. If you think you do, you're as delusional as Linus before you.”

“I’m in charge here,” Alexia forced herself to say.

Maleon shook his head. “And your bleeding heart is going to get you, me, and a whole lot of other folks killed.”

Her confidence shattered. “I know that I’m not a leader. You think I wanted to be put in charge of you?”

“Then stop trying to be what you’re not. Be who you are.”

Who I am? Alexia thought, trying not to scream or flee. Remembering who she was, she gathered her resolve. “I may not be a leader, but I promise every day to do my best with the power I have. If I can make this world even a little less cruel for others, I intend to do what I can.” Her eyes burned with tears, but she held them back. “Can you say the same, Stonebreaker?”

Maleon faltered, lips twitching between a smirk and a frown.

Alexia stood tall. “We will fight these ogres.”

Timmeck spoke as if she just yielded his life away to Zamael, “I am with you, Alexia.” He forced a grin and gave her a wink from his blind eye. “You look like a leader to me.”

Maleon stayed silent for several turns, then muttered, “Damn you, Meladon, for putting me in this position.”

Alexia turned to Endrei, her voice gentle. “Go back to Fritjof. If your son lives, I will bring him home. No matter what, I promise those responsible won’t live to take another child.” She offered her hand, sealing her vow.

Endrei grasped it. “We believe in ye, Alexia. Yer the hero o’ the people.”