2412 Qintax 08, Daleth

Nelnifa eyed the crates whose contents neared the floor. There might be a ton of containers in their camp, but if they couldn't put something in it, then what's the point? It was her turn to go to the forest and try to find what she could for the rest of the camp, but with their people coming back less and less, the Marshals dragged her back to the command tent.

Now, all of them idled inside, doing their best to stop asking each other questions about when the next correspondence was going to arrive by haldone. A game of poserne had already started, and from the looks of it, they followed the original match rules, going as far as making leagues and dragging everyone who passed by the tent for a game or two.

So far, Laie and her league was in the leading, and Nelnifa's league, which formed out of compulsion and not of her own will, came in second. The points were close, and if Nelnifa had the gall to be relaxed in the middle of war, she would have been bummed by it.

But she had different things to be bummed about. Word arrived yesterday about how the offensive front was doing against the outpost in Orayta. The reports weren't good. The Heiress had equipped her soldiers with as much dwarven metal she could, and it's proving to be hard to go against. As something that deflects all kinds of keijula magic, it's the perfect roundabout the unwritten laws of magic usage—one the Heiress and the Sovereign exploited without limit.

Her teeth dug on her lip. If she relegated more of the soldiers in this camp, had them go down there and lend a hand, what would it do to the covert operations she had launched? The systems of information worked well enough with this many heads and hands. Would they struggle and make a mistake leading to their ruin if she dared touch it?

None of them had been in a war, and Nelnifa still has much to learn about being a person, much less a Potentate and a war general. That's why she had to go out of her way and seek help from dubious places, and when she got it, she swore to use it in ways to help her people. She's no use sitting around and playing...cards.

"Are you still upset about being locked up here?" A voice jarred her out of her thoughts and back to the present. The howls and cheery conversation from the other Marshals and the invited soldiers from the command table went back to her senses in full swing. She raised her eyes to follow Ilphas as he snatched a spare stool from underneath the table and settled next to her on the corner of the tent. "It's for your own good."

Nelnifa refused to look at him, at the perfect strands of straight, beige hair shielding his forehead and framing his pristine face. Her anger might dissolve if she saw it for longer than two seconds. "What good would it be if I survived but our people suffered?" she asked.

"What good would it be if you didn't, and we'd be left to scramble around on our own?" Ilphas countered. His voice wasn't tinged with chastisement, but it still carried the same weight. They weren't talking in loud tones, but Nelnifa was sure the noise around them decreased notches.

She scoffed and crossed her arms, leaning farther from her seat so that her purple hair spilled from her shoulders. It's a good pose to keep her hands from strangling Ilphas for trying to talk to her while she sulked and saying ridiculously correct things. "You'll probably do a good job without me. I'm just another person to protect—and don't counter me on that," she shot him a withering look when he opened his mouth to shoot her down. "And you made it clear right this instant."

Ilphas pursed his lips. "We have an oath to the Potentate. We can't let something happen to you," he said.

"I can protect myself, thank you," Nelnifa shot.

"An oath is an oath, Princess," he answered. "Or Daexis will have your head."

She rolled her eyes. "If the gods were real, we wouldn't be in this mess," she said. When he failed to make another argument against it, she launched into the real reason she went quiet for the last two hours. "I mean, look at the state of the camp," she waved a hand at the near-empty crates. There's more by the tent's lip and scattered around the clearing they made themselves home in. "We'll run out of supplies by the end of the month. And if I don't go...where will that leave us?"

It's not the end of their problems too. The other Marshals have reported from the front lines, and offense wasn't the right strategy to adapt. They have lost people, many good ones too, and there's no other way to replenish it. Water sprites, whether Nelnifa liked it or not, have rested on their backs for too long, believing Lanteglos would protect them in times of war. Everyone, her included, believed the people should never have to learn to wield a sword or shoot from a bow because there was and wouldn't be a war.

Fate liked to mess with them somehow.

The mountains had become more erratic, more...unpredictable for Nelnifa to trust the other soldiers to navigate on their own. After a long time of knowing the rest of the water sprites had left the shore and ran into the forests, the Cardovians took it as a sign to explore the space under the canopies as well. And they brought their primitivity with them, going as far as hacking souls off the trails and dragging them back to the strongholds.

Nelnifa never knew what happened to those who were taken. All she had were reports from the front lines saying they fought against their own race, some even their own family. The words used were short—crisp—and she couldn't gauge any emotion from it. How could any water sprite turn back against their own race and join those who oppressed them? It didn't make sense, like this war they kept on waging. Was the Heiress so convincing she turned the minds of hundreds, if not, thousands of people in a flash? Her ideology wasn't even refined. Until now, Nelnifa puzzled over what it was Cardovia and Synketros wanted. Wasn't it ultimate control over the island? Eternal power? Why were they looking for the thrones?

"Princess," Ilphas said again, noticing how she trailed off back into her strange, little world. "Please tell me you're not planning to break out later in the night."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Go on, then, and give me the idea," she said. "Why would I go at night? There were more predators than prey at that time."

"But you're prepared to do it?" he inclined his head at her. This time, she glanced at him and, without her permission, her gaze stayed there. "I know you, Nelnifa."

It wasn't Nifa, as she asked, but it's one step closer. It's not like she was having an easy time calling him other than "Marshal". And "I know you"—it's such a bold claim to say to someone's face. Nelnifa could have laughed at that. She didn't even know herself and what she's capable of. How could anyone know her?

"Whatever you think you know of me, scrap it," she said. Why was she this prickly, when she didn't use to care about what other people think of her? Moreover, why was she so bothered with Ilphas saying it? "I'm not the same person as before."

Ilphas hummed. "Which makes you more interesting," he said. "Those who do not change cannot be called a soul."

"Also, don't spout poetry at me," she rolled her eyes, but a phantom of amusement fought its way up her throat. She did her best to tamp it down. Way, way down. "We don't have time for this."

The Marshal frowned, sensing another shift in their conversation. "A time for what?"

"To be lounging around in our asses, waiting for Cardovia to rain spells on us and demand surrender," Nelnifa threw her hands in the air, her voice rising notches louder, enough to disrupt the poserne game in the neighboring table. "To be talking, and laughing, and caring about anything else other than this war. People out there are dying, and we're here...doing nothing."

"We're protecting our people. That counts for something," Ilphas defended. "And we're keeping you safe. As much as you want to keep throwing yourself as bait into a den of thorns, we will be there to hold you back—"

"Don't," Nelnifa raised a finger to his face, stopping him from continuing down that road. "If you really want to protect our people, you'd hear me out," she turned to the rest of the Marshals and soldiers who had lowered their cards down as they sensed the urgency wrapping around her tone. "All of you should."

"It's time we go on offensive," she said, peeling off her stool and striding towards the table. The Marshals straightened and faced her, resistance already clouding their expressions. "But we won't be storming through the front gates of the strongholds. We'll try another way—something we can all be good at."

A grin spread across her lips, tearing them away from her teeth. "Assassination," she said with a finish.

The response she got was lukewarm. Laie coughed into her fist. "That's dangerous, Nifa," she answered. "The Heiress will notice all her important people in Desara dying without cause. You saw how she decimated Orayta. If she found us here..."

"It's definitely a risk we have to take," Nelnifa answered. "We can't stay hidden for long, anyway. And if I pick her men off one by one, she won't be looking here. She'd pull her hair apart in trying to find the next best soldier to take over and run things as usual."

"You aim to give the Heiress something to focus on other than scouring the mountains?" Rye said, scratching his chin. "It could work, or it could put us in more danger than we started."

Nelnifa balled her fists. Thanks to the table, nobody could see them by her sides, unless she counted Ilphas who followed her and stayed by her side. It's hard—when people still saw her as the timid princess who couldn't even muster the courage to open her mouth and face a crowd, when she did all the work to make sure she didn't end up like that again, and when people thought it's better to keep her in the sides and protect her.

She needed to be protected, but not by reducing her to a relic and pretending she's fine with it. If she wanted to be out there, helping her people in the way she knew how, they would have to want to be with her, rather than against her. And it sucked how she couldn't even show them that. Some Princess she was.

"Then what do you propose we do?" she threw their question back at them. "If you keep shutting my ideas down, then pray tell, you have a better one?"

Silence. Even Ilphas, who usually was the one who boasted about his greater intellect than that of the other Marshals, refused to meet Nelnifa's pointed gaze. See? They couldn't even muster the courage to think about what would happen if any of them went out of Zoriago and waged war on their own. How dare they pull her back and make her like them.

A familiar chirp echoed from outside the tent. The flap flew back and Ketha stuck her pink head in. "Apologies for the intrusion, Marshals...and Nifa," she said, giving Nelnifa a quick wink. "But a haldone arrived in camp, and it brought a message. Thought you should be the ones who read it first."

Nelnifa motioned for her friend to come in, and Ketha stalked inside, bearing a bird of prey with dappled brown and beige feathers. It turned its head from side to side, its gem-like blue eyes taking in the tent and the people in it. Her eyes locked on the furry legs whose curved talons clamped around Ketha's thin arm. Somewhere in the mess of hair sat something from the front lines, or from the hidden camps in other cities, or from somewhere else.

Ketha set the bird down on the table and retreated outside the tent with her shoulders tensed and her footsteps quick. Unlike Nelnifa, her friend had a choice in whether she would feel uncomfortable in this place or not. Everyone waited with baited breath as Nelnifa checked one leg at a time, looking for the characteristic twine tying a shred of parchment to the messenger. She found one on the left leg, and after untying it, she scrambled to open it.

What greeted her was the familiar scrawl of her father, the Potentate. It's written in Qirela, the dialect spoken only in Orayta and Zoriago. If anyone saw the message being written, she hoped they didn't understand it. And it read:

Word received from the Seelie Court. To attain full sovereignty over the territory, we need to drive the infidels from our land, thus proving our own might apart from Lanteglos. It is the only compromise I can reach with the Court.

Nelnifa's gut soured. Even though it's their fault Desara ended up the way it was now, they still wanted to make this hard for everyone involved by proposing such a crappy plan. Her father deserved a better territory, and it hurt her to see him be stuck with something like Desara.

She relayed the contents of the message to the Marshals. When she finished, she folded her hands atop the table. "We'll proceed with my plan, then," she said. "We'll be hitting two witches with one spell. If we weaken Cardovia's hold on the territory, we will prove to Lanteglos we are capable of standing on our own and destroy the Heiress' hold in Desara."

"Forgive me, Princess," Marshal Roasan raised a finger. "But how do you plan on getting on with this?"

Nelnifa strode towards the end of the desk and plucked a quill, a bottle of ink, and a torn sheet of parchment. She gave the haldone a quick pat in the head, willing it to stay a bit longer while she did what she had to do. The Marshals watched her scrawl one item after another, filling the length of the parchment with everything she needed. At the end, she put the words—Bring it to me as soon as you get back. We will be awaiting your safe return.

She was about to seal it when she remembered one more thing. On the very top of the list, the place she's certain her father would read first, she put the most important concoction she knew.

Xyth's Bane.

A shadow fell over her, and she turned in time to find Ilphas staring over her shoulder. He saw everything she wrote down—it showed from the concerned expression marring his features. "Nelnifa, I—"

She moved towards the idle haldone before he could snatch it away from her. Her world jerked back when a steel grip wrapped around her wrist, pulling her away from the bird. She whirled to find her face inches from Ilphas'.

"Let go," she hissed. "I command it."

"Sucks to be you, Princess, but I don't listen to nonsensical orders," Ilphas fired back. "You're seriously considering working with...with poison! Are you seeing yourself?"

"That's what assassination means, Ilphas," she said, his name flying from her lips with such ease it stunned her for a brief second. "I'm trying to pave the best way for all of us to survive, and to do that, we need lethal killers. Quick ones. Painless ones. And these," she waved the parchment containing her murder plan near his face. "Are our answer to that."

She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Don't try and stop me this time."

Conflict danced in Ilphas' eyes, and this was the first time Nelnifa understood what color they were. Something like brown or green or amber, depending on where the light hit it. She slapped his grip off her arm and strode towards the haldone who waited with patience all this time. When she was done securing her message, she strode out of the tent and sent the bird to the sky.

It's time for the hunted to become the hunter, and if that was someone Nelnifa had to be, there's no more room for hesitation.