Elethien looked at her prisoner. After a bit travelling to reunite with the rest of the original rebels and setting up camp a short distance away from the enemy city of Maerila, he had lost much of his initial splendour. His expensive clothing was exchanged for a crude tunic and cloak, his long white hair now a sprawling mess on his head, his smooth skin sullied with bits of dirt. Still, his aura was vastly different from the rest of the Foresters, his actions and manner of speech delicate and graceful whenever he was allowed to take a walk around the camp with supervision.

Even at this moment, he sat dignified on the floor of her tent, his expression relaxed as he slowly munched on a cracker. Even Elethien would realise this lifestyle was far different than the one he was used to, but he showed no signs of discomfort or humiliation. He just ate, ignoring the environment around him.

‘Aren’t you a bit worried your people haven’t come to rescue you yet?’ she asked. ‘It’s been over a week.’

‘Aren’t you worried about your food supplies?’ Amovishel responded, taking another bite out of the cracker.

He wasn’t wrong. Despite being free to loot from all the nearby villages, it was quite difficult to feed thousands of Foresters for a long period of time. Most of them were able-bodied fighting warriors, but word of the rebellion had also led many villages to depart from their sedentary lifestyles and join Elethien in her war. The farmland around Maerila wasn’t exactly the most fertile, and without a strong system to distribute food, there was no idea to know whether their raids every day were enough to feed them all. It wasn’t that they’d run out. It was simply cumbersome to suddenly have such a large number of Foresters in her ranks.

Her people were becoming restless. Maerila had to fall, and fast.

She clasped her hands together to pray.

What should I do next?

Just like the day before, Fate was silent. It had been silent since she had captured Amovishel, not giving her much of a sign besides a slight gust of wind.

‘Your god is refusing to talk to you, isn’t it?’ Amovishel asked as a smug smile crept across his face.

‘The time isn’t right,’ she replied coldly.

‘And when is the time right, exactly?’

Frustrated, Elethien walked towards him, her sword in her hand. Grabbing him by the collar, she shoved him to the ground and planted her sword firmly next to his head, the blade barely slicing the tip of his ear.

‘Fate will answer,’ she hissed, her face uncomfortably close to his as she bent down towards him. She was far taller and well-built than that fragile-looking prince. If she wanted to, she could easily beat him to death. The strands of her hair were like thin blades that cut through his skin, obstructing his vision so he could not see anything but her face, her emerald-green eyes reaching into the depths of his soul.

She had done this to him multiple times already. Not once did he buckle under pressure, his expression the same as before. No matter how threatening her gaze, he stayed the same. As if she wasn’t someone to be afraid of.

‘That’s not how a king threatens her enemies,’ he said softly. ‘There should be more calmness in your attitude. I should feel that you are in control, not losing control. Where was the coolness I saw that night when you effortlessly used your magic to kill so many of my people? Is it all gone because your god is not responding to your questions?’

There was still no fear in his eyes.

Sighing, Elethien released her grip and sat down on the floor a short distance from him, her sword now plucked out of the ground and placed by her side. ‘You just never lose your cool, huh.’

‘Controlling one’s emotions is fundamental to being a leader, in addition to charisma and courage,’ Amovishel explained as he sat back up. ‘You’re already a fine leader, but in my eyes, you still can’t call yourself a king… or perhaps more accurately, a queen.’

‘What is a queen?’

‘Basically a king but a woman. Usually there would be a king and his spouse would be the queen. My kingdom hasn’t had a queen in a while, though.’

‘Was your mother the queen, then?’

‘No.’

‘Then who was?’

‘The king’s spouse, obviously. I was born from an impulsive mistake by my father.’

‘Not very kingly of him,’ Elethien commented. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the concept, but she imagined it to be something like an individual with one official spouse while having multiple sexual partners. It was something quite rare in the Forester community. People simply had sex with whoever they saw fit, to have a child of their blood before they died in battle.

‘And yet he’s still the king,’ Amovishel said. ‘Even if he had a moment of weakness, his inheritance of the throne from the previous king allowed him to stay as king. The law of the kingdom permits him to continue being king until he abdicates or dies.’

‘What do you mean? Am I not a king—’

‘Queen,’ Amovishel interrupted.

‘... Queen,’ Elethien said a little uncomfortably. ‘Am I then not a queen because I didn’t inherit anything and have no law that says I am?’

That explained her inadequacies in having complete control over her people’s life and death. It was a shame.

‘You’re pretty smart for someone who’s illiterate,’ Amovishel praised. ‘However, there’s one other way for you to be queen.’

‘And that is…?’

‘The people see you as their queen. It’s not as “legitimate”, but in those people’s eyes, you are their queen. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have inheritance, the law, or even land to claim rulership over. As long as you continue to convince them that you are their queen, you will simply be a queen.’

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‘So as long as they believe, then I am one?’

‘Yes. For all the Foresters here, you are their queen. Whatever you do, they shall follow.’

To a limited extent, she indeed had control over the Foresters. They had faithfully followed her this entire time, even if there were feelings of restlessness in the camp. She had protected them, even if a few had died already during that battle in the enemy camp. They believed in victory under her command, and she had indeed delivered them to victory thus far.

Just as Fate had guided her to victory.

‘Do you see me as a queen then?’ Elethien asked.

‘No,’ Amovishel swiftly replied. ‘As the Crown Prince of Trelven, I can’t see you as queen. To do so will mean I have betrayed my own kingdom, my king, my father. Even if half of my body flows Forester blood, I can’t see myself leaving the place that raised me for a completely new Kingdom of Foresters.’

‘What would make you see me as one, then?’

‘If Trelven is completely gone, leaving me nothing but who I am… then I will kill myself, never to acknowledge another individual as king or queen.’

‘So you’ll never see me as a queen,’ Elethien said.

‘Never.’

Elethien stared directly into his eyes. ‘One day, you’ll bow down to me.’

She reached forward, brushing back Amovishel’s hair to look at his entire face. ‘I can’t allow someone who’s like me to not be in my kingdom.’

Even in such close proximity, he didn’t flinch, responding to her gaze with his own.

‘You know, you’re even more interesting than I thought at first,’ he commented.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Even when talking to the enemy’s crown prince, you believe there is a chance for him to join you,’ Amovishel chuckled. ‘I admire your confidence. Even if it’s a bit stupid.’

‘Stupid?’ she growled. ‘Who is the one in captivity right now?’

‘Let me explain,’ he nudged her back a little, creating space between the two of them. ‘You can’t possibly expect someone who’s been raised in a completely different culture to just switch sides and join your own. At least not without extreme force and manipulation. And, to be frank, I don’t see you as someone capable of much manipulation.’

He was right in a sense. Elethien had no need for that. So long as she continued to spread her wings and swing her sword, Fate would deliver her victory.

‘Your style of battle is very straightforward, too straightforward even. No sane human being would charge into a trap alone, yet you went in… and came out with a captive: me. It speaks volumes of your individual martial prowess, but in that skirmish, there were no tactics involved. You simply went in while sending the rest of your followers to recruit more Foresters. I recognise some of them. They came from the Trelvenese camp, didn’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you essentially sent less than a hundred of your people into a camp of thousands of soldiers, and expected them to come out unscathed with recruits many times their number?’

‘Of course. Fate told me to do so, so I did.’ She didn’t really understand where Amovishel was going. She won that battle, didn’t she?

‘Are you… joking?’ Amovishel stifled a laugh. ‘Because your god told you to do something, you did it without any question?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Even when it seemed impossible?’

‘I won, didn’t I?’ It was executed to near perfection. Even though she wasn’t able to prevent some of her people from dying in the battle, it was still a resounding victory. Fate was in complete control, and as one blessed by it, she naturally would be the victor. There was practically nothing that she did wrong.

‘That’s not the point,’ Amovishel sighed in exasperation. ‘In normal circumstances, you would’ve had your head on a pike by now, your followers slaughtered en masse. These are odds that only geniuses with a solid plan, coupled with extreme luck, can overcome. You barely even had a plan, based on what I know. You didn’t sabotage us before your attack. You didn’t prepare a counter-ambush. You didn’t even have reinforcements. It was just you fighting alone, and thankfully it was up against a very foolish general. Your kingdom could’ve ended before it even began.’

‘This is just speculation on your end,’ Elethien retorted. ‘With Fate, I can do anything. With its blessing, my kingdom is destined to succeed.’

‘What if, theoretically speaking, Fate retracts its blessing one day?’ Amovishel questioned. ‘Will you still charge blindly as you did, fighting with your sword and not your brain?’

‘Such a scenario will never happen,’ Elethien said confidently. ‘Fate will never abandon me. The kingdom will grow and expand until all the Foresters are under my banner, and I, their king— queen, will lead us all to unprecedented peace and prosperity.’

‘Well, I admire your dream, at the very least,’ Amovishel smiled in sympathy. ‘Something many people in my kingdom unfortunately do not have.’

‘What is your dream, then?’ Elethien asked.

‘To protect my kingdom and end this war,’ Amovishel declared, his tone genuine and passionate. ‘Just as you love your people, I also love mine. I don’t wish to see my people suffer any further in this pointless war. The hatred, the hostilities, the greed… I want all of it to end.’

‘So you’re like me.’

‘Of course,’ Amovishel said. ‘That’s why I found you interesting as well. We each have our version of the ideal world, dedicating ourselves for our own utopia… But unfortunately, our paths will never align.’

‘Say, Amovishel,’ Elethien said as she stood up, finally noticing Teion at the entrance of the tent. ‘What if I let you have a clearer vision of what the Kingdom of Foresters look like? Then you can decide whether to still stubbornly fight against us.’

‘You’re too confident,’ Amovishel replied. ‘Pride comes before the fall.’

‘We’ll see.’ She walked towards Teion, casting her shadow towards Amovishel. As she glanced back, she realised just how physically small the enemy prince was compared to her. Yet in the conversation earlier, she felt as if the man was of the same stature as her, his calm confidence creating a far bigger image of himself.

‘You finally stopped talking to him,’ Teion said, his face displaying a slight annoyance. He must’ve waited for quite a while.

‘What do you want?’

‘We’ve just been looting and gathering resources this entire time without a clear plan of where to go next,’ Teion complained. ‘At this rate, we’ll just be waiting for the enemy to regroup and attack all of us at once.’

‘I’ve been praying,’ Elethien explained.

‘Has Fate given a sign?’

No, it hasn’t. But Elethien couldn’t say that now, especially when her people’s patience was running low.

‘We attack Maerila at dawn,’ she said. ‘Tell everyone to rest up, and get ready for an assault on the city walls before daybreak tomorrow.’

‘But we don’t have any siege engines or even ladders—’

‘We can use our magic to blast a hole in the walls or attack the gate, can’t we?’ Elethien looked firmly into Teion’s eyes. ‘You easily broke the gates of Norerila before; surely you can do it again. My wings will protect everyone from harm. Believe in me. We will deliver another miraculous victory.’

‘How long will it take us to do that, though? It takes much effort to even cause a weakness in the thick stone, and by that time, surely most of us will be exhausted.’

‘Believe in me, in Fate,’ Elethien emphasised.

‘... As you wish. I will be at the vanguard, I assume?’

‘Of course. Now go and tell everyone the plan.’

After a salute, Teion exited the tent, though it still seemed he wasn’t very convinced. Satisfied, Elethien turned back to Amovishel, only to find the man chuckling under his breath.

‘All that “trust in Fate”, and you eventually go with your own decision before your god has even given an answer,’ Amovishel said wryly. ‘Is this your way of showing a vision of your kingdom to me?’

Elethien gave no reply, only walking back towards Amovishel as her right eye began to bleed, the sclera and iris slowly being dyed black. Without a word, she reached down, grabbed him by the neck and forced him onto the ground.

‘Fate will never abandon me,’ she hissed.

‘W-We’ll… see,’ Amovishel gasped weakly. He still maintained that disgusting smug on his face.