27 Tavorhel. The fourth day of the ninth month.
The Foresters really were stupid.
Esiel looked at the rebels from a distance, his hands exceedingly warm from the fireball earlier. With an absolute advantage in numbers and tactics, victory was already in sight. The troops had performed far better than he imagined, their cowardly instincts utilised to near perfection. By genuinely fleeing in the face of the enemy, the Trelvenese had created an extremely convincing trap for the Foresters to fall into.
Leading a bunch of cowards against a bunch of animals, he had managed to manipulate the battle into a desirable position. With his soldiers being practically disposable, there was almost nothing to impede his plans.
To flee when he fled. That was the order Esiel gave to the foot soldiers before they marched out of the city, leaving most of the archers and all of the cavalry inside. The morale of an army, particularly if it was a semi-professional one, relied greatly on the commander. At the slightest change of the tide, his soldiers could easily desert and run away from the battle. This was perhaps why Teraiil stubbornly stayed inside the city despite having such a massive advantage over the Foresters.
Alas, such cowardice wasn’t exactly Esiel’s style. The heat of day, the increasing dryness in the land and the open fields were ideal for him to use his fire magic.
It was boring for the Foresters to only have mastery over one or two types of magic, wasting away their already-disposable, short lives for the sake of unimpressive energy blasts that did a little more damage than an arrow and weapon strengthening that wasn’t even visible to the naked eye. To tap into one’s life force was the most beautiful weapon one could use to kill another. By sacrificing a bit of his own life, he could take the lives of others. The Foresters knew how to do that innately, almost like how one takes air in to breathe. Yet they squandered that beautiful gift into plain blasts, creating unaesthetic explosions for several years before they spent all that they had.
It was such a waste, their lack of creativity a testament to their innate animal-like, instinctive stupidity.
Unlike the Foresters who naturally knew magic, Esiel had come across it as a young child, witnessing an energy blast that shot through his mother in the middle of a battle. For how stupid his father was to bring his mother to a battlefield, it opened his eyes to the world of magic. By sheer willpower he had felt the gate to his core open, the energy inside him overwhelming his entire body. Flames of passion engulfed him, and as the enemies around him burned away into ashes, he remembered he was laughing in ecstasy, in joy of this new discovery. It felt so empowering, so rejuvenating, so… euphoric.
It was then when he surrendered to the beauty of magic.
For over thirty years he dedicated himself to the study and practice of magic. Along with his natural military talent, it was only a matter of time when he was promoted to the rank of Commander-General. The kingdom offered him a place to fully use his talents and skills. The king recognised his power even if everyone else feared him. He later encountered other peers similar to him, but none had the same love for magic as he had. No one else had both the passion and ability to learn magic like him.
It was in all of this that he became thoroughly disappointed, even spiteful against the Foresters. Their entire race had access to magic by nature. Although they had a small population, with dedicated study they could easily establish their own kingdom on the continent. Instead, generation after generation, they were practically enslaved by the Mercenaries’ Guild and used by Trelven and Rhinn, fighting for factions that could care less about them. And none of them rose up.
Just as magic was nature to them, so was their identity as a servient race.
He hated such unfairness. The Foresters could’ve been so much more. Therefore, Esiel concluded… The Foresters were simply a waste of life and energy anyway in this precious world. Since they squandered the gift of magic, it was only natural that they should be punished for their inability. If even normal Trelvenese soldiers could perform nearly as well as them, then there was no point in wasting Trelvenese resources to recruit, feed and equip the Foresters for battle.
The Foresters under his personal command over the past decade and a half had a near-hundred percent casualty rate. It was a horrifying statistic to many in the royal court, but for Esiel, it was just a statistic. Every new batch of Foresters that he recruited didn’t know of him beforehand. There were simply too few left alive to tell of his name, assuming those animals knew how to speak his name.
The only reason why he hadn’t been removed from his post was his consistency to come out victorious after nearly every battle. Without any social constraint to feasibly hold him back (save for the king himself), he could win in any way he pleased. Whether that involved sacrificing all of the Foresters or a Trelvenese division, it did not matter. He brought results, and that was good enough.
When a small group of Foresters finally rose up in revolt, he thought it was something that’d last no longer than a month. They were too dumb to have even the barest structural hierarchy within their ranks to establish a foothold. Before the news of General Arael’s death and Crown Prince Amovishel’s capture reached the capital, he assumed it was something that was soon to pass. He offered to fight the rebellion simply because he found himself starting to enjoy the killing of Foresters. It was a way to vent his frustrations on such an otherwise special people, after all.
But here, he found, this one felt different.
The vast majority of the rebels were similar, using magic either through energy blasts or strengthening their weapons. However, their leader, a mixed-blood woman, was someone Esiel could finally call ‘special’. Those white wings of pure energy protecting her people from his fire barrages and arrows; her extremely concentrated energy blast that shattered the blade of his sword in spectacular fashion; the four flying black greatswords that effortlessly cut through so many of his soldiers with grace and elegance…
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He finally found another person who truly appreciated the potential of magic, sacrificing so much of her life force to create such glorious images of magic.
Even now, as she and her followers stood cornered against his troops, her defiant expression was such a sight to behold.
He had no idea where she came from, which battles she had fought in prior to leading that rebellion, or even her name, but in that moment, he fell in love with her magic.
He’d have no remorse in killing every single Forester rebel here but her. Rescuing the crown prince was what he came to do, but capturing that mixed-blood was personally satisfactory enough for him. He would then study her in great detail, investigating her core and how it could hold such an insane amount of energy inside. She would be his first experiment to find the true depths of magic. There was no better candidate.
He rode his horse towards the Foresters, his bodyguards close by in case he was attacked by one of those foolish rebels.
‘How about this, leader of the Foresters,’ he suggested, weaving his horse through the formations until he was directly in front of the woman. She was carried on the back of a Forester, her body probably severely weakened after using her magic. ‘Surrender yourself, and the rest may be let go.’
Not that he intended to actually go through with his promise. The promise itself would become a burden the moment he got what he wanted.
‘Commander-General!’ a voice shouted angrily from the ranks. ‘What are you doing?’
It was Teraiil. Demoted to a lieutenant, he had nonetheless insisted on fighting on the front lines. That basically meant he was stationed behind nearly all of the foot soldiers, dispatched only when the ambush began. As much as Esiel disliked the man’s foolishness, he was better kept alive than dead. It would be a hassle to promote a new lieutenant, after all.
Still, the fact remained: the man was quite annoying.
‘We’re here to rescue the crown prince!’ Teraiil yelled. ‘Not to capture the rebel leader!’
‘Why didn’t you attempt to rescue him while you seized power of the army, then?’ Esiel questioned.
Teraiil was quickly shut up. The man was truly beyond a dunce.
‘Now,’ Esiel turned back to the woman. ‘What will your choice be?’
She stared at him with her half-green, half-black eyes. ‘No one will be given to you.’
The four greatswords sped towards him at astonishing speed. Without time to even charge up his fireballs, Esiel instead rolled off his horse, allowing his steed to be sliced up into several pieces. Its blood splattered on his armour as the beast fell to the ground, but otherwise he was unscathed.
He was being far too confident. This speed was likely what caused General Arael to meet an early demise.
Well, it was a shame she didn’t accept his proposal.
‘Attack!’ he shouted.
Perhaps still shook at the loss of so many of their comrades earlier, his soldiers attacked the Foresters with much hesitation, the ferocity gone from their bodies. As the arrows rained down upon the Forester group, even they felt weaker than before. It was an expected consequence of his ruthlessness, but if it had been his regular troops, it’d barely even faze them. Esiel was simply too spoiled by his own subordinates.
He retreated further back, the waves of foot soldiers surrounding him in a sea of hot, sweaty bodies. They refused to get close to the woman. The greatswords surrounded her like a pack of dogs, cutting down any who dared come near. A foolish tactic. Only by being aggressive would one have the chance to break free out of a difficult situation.
Maybe Esiel overestimated his enemy. Despite having such fascinating power, the woman was still exceedingly stupid.
He shot a fireball into the air, the flames once again scattering before raining down upon the enemies en masse. Yet this time, he released a second fireball, its arch aimed straight for the Forester leader.
It was a shame, but somewhere inside him, he expected the woman to simply block the attack with her remaining three wings.
Boom! Contact. She used her wings. That was undebatable. The magnificent, splendorous display of magic was shown again. Smoke immediately spread through the battlefield, obscuring everyone’s vision. There was mild confusion, but for the most part, the soldiers still had their bearings, finally pushing forward as Esiel heard increasingly hurried footsteps.
The Foresters were running away from his army and towards the fire he had created.
It felt idiotic. Instead of surrendering to their inevitable defeat, they decided to collectively suicide in a sea of fire. That kind of pride would be commendable for some, but for Esiel, it was just cowardice from accepting one’s fate.
‘And I had such high hopes for such a gifted user of magic. In the end they’re just as simple-minded as I’d expect.’
Disappointed, he aimed his palm towards the smoke. Focusing his energy, he fired a concentrated flaming beam into the distance, knocking himself back several steps in the process. The beam scorched several soldiers’ armour, setting parts of their clothing on fire. They rolled on the floor in panic, their comrades running away so as not to catch the fires.
Out of respect for the incredible magic he was able to bear witness, he could at least sacrifice a bit more of his life force to kill them mercifully.
The smoke immediately cleared away from the force of the beam. It blasted past a Forester’s body, burning their clothing and charring their flesh and bones. The Forester screamed in pain as he collapsed onto the dry ground.
The dry ground.
The fire was nowhere to be seen. As the smoke cleared further, Esiel realised the nature of the bizarre phenomenon: the woman’s wings were sweeping the ground, smothering the fires with thick feathers. Even as the soldiers attempted to approach the Foresters, the four greatswords swiftly cut them down as an extremely effective rear guard. Soon, none of them dared to chase the Foresters, preferring to save their pitiful lives than to suicidally charge against the enemies the kingdom ordered them to defeat.
And even after using all this magic, the woman still showed no signs of further exhaustion other than being carried on her comrade’s back.
Such ingenuity.
At this moment, it would be too costly to continue the chase, even for him. The small numbers meant that the woman could more easily protect her forces with her wings, while her flying greatswords were currently too great of an obstacle to overcome for the soldiers. It wasn’t worth it anymore.
‘Change of plans,’ Esiel announced. ‘We’re heading back to regroup. Retreat!’
He smiled under his helmet. Perhaps the woman was worth capturing, after all.