We receive our envelopes today, the ones containing our marching orders. We’re all milling about in the common room, trying to find who we will be serving alongside... I am praying I get an assignment with Lazierte, maybe something that can give us some notability in the eyes of Her Majesty. I can't even bring myself to open the envelope until my best friend can find me amongst the other witches, her eyes similarly anxious to mine, even if the rest of her face would never admit it.

"Well, open the dang thing! We won't know where we're going otherwise!"

It puts a smile on my face, though some part of me did sting. Hesitation again, will I be killed by an envelope? I try to open my missive with grace and poise, but somehow through my nervousness this demand doesn't get communicated to my fingers right and I end up with a torn open envelope, and a slightly messed up set of orders.

"You're never this clumsy when we're together, Serena."

Lazierte laughs, and subsequently struggles with her own envelope. Whoever sealed these things sealed them tight, and didn't account for nervous girls trying to open them with clumsy fingers. She looks at her orders immediately, studying them as closely as possible, eyes wide.

"They've given me a colonelcy. In Samnia, with your brother's army."

I try not to wince at the prospect of my amazing brother taking my friend away from me, even if this is a good opportunity for her. "Well, Antoine has always received the best of everything."

It takes Lazierte a few moments to get the joke, before she snorts with laughter in her typical fashion. "You charmer. You must be practicing your flirtations somewhere away from me, you've come a long way from telling me that I had a very beautiful collarbone."

"Hey! That was just a training flirtation! ... And you do have a pretty collarbone, so there! It's your fault, I was just being honest!" Other students are looking at us now and I fear the two of us may have developed something of a reputation over the months in which our friendship had grown.

"Hehe, training... Never change, you unfathomable disaster."

"I'm just going to read my orders now..." Damn that Lazierte and her ability to wind me up and get me blushing... "... A generalship... They want another General Pollineux."

"That's what you get for talking back to the lecturer so much, I guess. All I did was study hard; I should've been a combative know-it-all."

"Hehe, you really think it's for more than my name?"

"I'd rather follow you than your blowhard brother. I trust you."

She really knows how to turn on the sincerity at just the right moment to make it sting. I look further down my orders, hoping that I too will be sent to Samnia. It's a very pretty country, and also I'd like to have my best friend's hand to hold during my first ever campaign. I wonder how many other military arrangements have ever been made for the sake of maintaining bedfellows... Or separating them.

"They want me in Alemannia. I'll be whipping Germans and supporting the offensive against the Confederation of Princes... There's a whole mountain range between there and Samnia, the entire Helvetian Republic..."

Lazierte's faux confidence has never seemed so faux before, her entire body shrinking by an inch. "... How're we going to share a bed with a mountain range between us?"

"... We could send letters?"

"That could take weeks... Even months."

"We could... We could invade Helvetia together! Meet in the middle!"

"I'm pretty sure it would upset The Queen to drag Avernia into ANOTHER war. We've got our fill of those right now." Despite Lazierte's dismissal of the idea, I note she certainly looks tempted.

"... Then, I'll simply have to conquer all of Germania. And you'll have to conquer all of Samnia, and then we can both march on the Magyars together! If we end the war and conquer the entirety of La'an then surely they can't assign us to duties apart from one another, right?"

"... Hehe, that might be the most 'Serena' plan I've ever heard of..." That snort again... I am going to miss her dumb little laugh. "Which means you must be sincere about it. I know you well enough to know you can’t tell a lie to save your life. If you say we're going to conquer all of La'an just to hold each other's hands again, then I have to believe you."

There’s an awkward moment where nothing is said, a moment in which all the world falls away, and the only thing that remains is a lonely girl about to be separated from her best friend. I can see every inch of Lazierte in this moment, not that there are many of them. The girl is short and despite two years of access to the officer school mess hall she still looks rather malnourished, her features vaguely skeletal. And yet there is something comforting about the sharp definition of her form... And I know from experience that she is capable of softness.

She seems to be focused on me in a similar way, and my head runs through every imperfection she might be noticing. My mousey brown hair, my soft and unimpressive features, my small chest, my dull blue eyes, my average height... I have always hated mirrors, in their gaze I look less a person and more an amalgamation of whatever people considered to be 'boring' in a human being... And yet Lazierte looks upon this form with such interest, it evident in her eyes that she will miss it, miss me dearly.

The moment finally ends when she steps forward and hugs me tightly, almost a little sharply given her skin and bones form. "Serena... I don't want you to go."

She holds me with surprising strength, I don't think I'll be getting out of her embrace without her consent... Which wouldn't be the worst thing if we didn't have the rest of our lives to get to. "I won't be gone long. Lazierte, I will bring us back together again, all you have to do is wait."

"And not die."

"And not die."

"Hehe... Serena, never ever die. I need you to promise me that."

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"... Never ever? I don't think I can-"

"Swear it or I never let go! I know you, you're the type to get yourself killed in some glorious, heroic way to serve Her Majesty! Or to show up your idiot brother, or just to save some people you've never met! Which is why I need to have you swear to me that you won't die. At all! Not even a little bit!"

It’s a completely unreasonable and utterly dishonest demand from Lazierte, something I can’t promise and be honest… But. "... I promise I'll never die."

"... Now promise you'll see me again, that you'll take my hand again."

"Lazierte, people are staring."

She only squeezes me tighter at that, as if shielding me from the gazes of the other comrade witches. "People can mind their own business! Promise me-"

"I promise I will take your hand again. I swear on Her Majesty that I will take your hand again."

"... Okay."

She slowly lets me go... And in a moment of cheekiness I hold her right back, as tight as I am able. "Now you promise the same! No dying, take my hand again. Swear it?"

"... I swear it. On Her Majesty."

I hold her a little while longer, the poor girl needs it and frankly, so do I… When I finally, reluctantly let her free, I can see that she's smiling. And yet I know that the moment I'm out of sight she'll be crying for days. Which idiot wrote these stupid orders anyway?

"Pollineux! You’re late! Your carriage has been waiting for five minutes now! Did you not read your orders?!"

... The Marshal of Avernia. He is the idiot who wrote these orders. I look down at the missive again, paying special attention to when I am expected to be sent to the front, finding that they ordered me to move out... Literally yesterday. They wanted me on the way to Alemannia yesterday. I show Lazierte, who goes wide eyed with bafflement.

"... My orders send me out in a week. I... I thought we had another week-"

"Pollineux! I will go over there and drag you out if I have to-"

Lazierte hurriedly kisses my cheek, her lips urgent and soon withdrawn. "... I'm a coward. I'm sorry."

I have no idea what she meant, and I would happily have stayed to ask if the most powerful religious authority in the country wasn't dragging me out the door, leaving me with only questions and red cheeks... I guess I really do have to conquer the Confederation of Princes, otherwise it might be years before I know what that was about, what she was playing at... Lazierte always knew how to make me blush, it seemed to be among her favorite pastimes. But this feels different, this time she wasn't laughing at me.

"This time she kissed me..."

The Marshal, when he isn’t shouting over a group of teenagers, is capable of surprising gentleness in his tone, even if not in his character. "Do you know why I separated you and Lazierte, Serena?"

I am angry even before I fully process his words, after which I am furious. "You did this on purpose?!"

"You can't win a war by holding hands and getting along. The two of you are only going to reinforce each other's worst virtues. Virtues that have no place on a battlefield."

"What does that have to do with commanding an army?! Surely-"

"It is less about commanding an army, and more about surviving a battlefield. You've clearly learned much from your time here, Serena, and I know just how closely you've studied your brother's victories. I trust you to win any theoretical exercise we could concoct here... But the world beyond armchairs and battle maps is a very violent place, and very cold. A battlefield is not a place where human beings can live, it is the domain of creatures beyond human understanding. These places will swallow you whole and force you to fight your way out of their stomachs, force you to spend flesh and steel to carve a path out of them... I don't believe a Serena Pollineux who has a source of warmth beside her can spend the flesh she'll need to survive this cold world. Nor can a Lazierte."

"... You make it sound so horrible."

"It's about perspective, Serena. These things about the world are unchangeable, they are set in stone. People will die, flesh will be spent, steel will be used. What can be changed is the part of you that says these things are bad. You must shape yourself to fit the realities of the world. And giving up childish things like 'best friends' is the first step."

"I don't want to change… Lazierte doesn’t want me to change either."

"Do you think the world will give you a choice in the matter? Become an adult on your own terms, or have adultness thrust upon you. Those are the choices the world will give you. It is the only way to move forward."

"Move forward into the battlefield, into the slaughterhouse..."

"You're starting to understand. You might just be worthy of your rank of general after all."

We reach our destination, a rather fancy little horse-drawn carriage that all my personal effects have already been loaded onto. It seems that being a general comes with some perks. I wonder if this is why people allow themselves to become 'adults', for the fancy carriages and the power to give speeches to nineteen-year-olds about the nature of the world. I realize with some horror that the Marshal isn’t dragging me anymore, and I have been following him here under my own power. I get onto the carriage without another word, there is nothing I can say that wouldn't be a blasphemy now.

The Marshal seems to appreciate my silence, giving me a genuine little smile as I slip onto the overly plush seating of the carriage. "Best of luck, General Pollineux. Win Steel some victories."

I close the door, the carriage begins to move, and mercifully I am away from the Marshal and everything else. I thought I’d cry, and yet tears aren't coming. It feels disrespectful, I can't spare even a single one for Lazierte, when I knew she will be crying alone in our once shared bunk tonight. But I can't help it, I feel too resolute to weep.

I never want to be a grown-up like the Marshal. I never want to walk that path.