2412 Xavem 03, Jyda

Canelis clicked her tongue at the scratchy fabric she had to wear for the mission. It was unlike the usual robes she wore off-duty, but she had seen it donned by other fairies from neighboring territories. She didn't imagine it's this...coarse. This agrubian fabric was worthy of her ire.

Bustling sounds surrounded her from all fronts, with the entire camp preparing to move out this afternoon. This was their biggest mission yet, and Canelis threw everything she had into it. Maybe it wouldn't happen as she intended, but she didn't need it to. Mishaps were expected, and she had worked sleepless nights trying to predict them and provide a solution to each one.

It explained the tightness in her shoulders and the weight resting over her eyelids.

This was no time to rest, though. She needed to be in the cart in about half an hour.

"Canelis," a voice called out from the abundance of various noises ringing behind her.

She turned to find Cailen jogging towards her, elbowing soldiers out of the way while muttering his excuses. She cast one longing look at the horizon and noticed the cart they marked wasn't coming any time soon. Sure. There's time to spare.

Cailen caught up to her, exhaling a strong breath as he braced his hips. That little run tired him out? Wow. What happened to all his renegade training? "Thank Umagi I caught up to you," he rasped.

She cocked an eyebrow, giving him a quick scan. Sweat beaded on his hairline despite the cold in Ok-Sa. What was that? Battle nerves, perhaps? He's taking this harder than Canelis did, and she's the one who organized everything. "It's General Frachdal to you," she corrected, as he straightened up. "I can't have you undermining my authority so early in the process."

"I'm the one who pushed you to this, right? I get a free pass," Cailen said, a grin pulling the corners of his lips up. "Besides, I came to tell you something."

Canelis raised her chin at him. "Let's hear it."

A sliver of a wince crawled into his features, his eyes becoming glassy for a second. Words seemed to freeze at the tip of his tongue as he blinked and pursed his lips. "I...came to tell you," he said, scratching his temples and shifting his weight from foot to foot. Finally, he snapped his fingers, making Canelis flinch in surprise. "I came to tell you that I have something to tell you after this whole thing."

What in Pidmena's name was that?

"Are you pulling my wing, Commander?" Canelis glared at him. "I don't find it amusing."

Cailen blew a long gust of wind from his nostrils. "Just trust me on this," he said. "I have something you must hear. But now's not the time, I guess. When we take over Xai-Ren, I will tell you. I swear on Daexis' name."

Canelis could have rolled her eyes, but she suppressed the urge. Let him say what nonsense he cooked up in his strange head. Instead, she wagged a hand by his face. "To hell with you and your childish antics," she said. "I wish you good luck on your part of the operation."

"Gods, what would it take to defrost you?" Cailen whined even though he grinned like a pleased topiaga.

She gripped the sword stuck to her side, making sure it popped from the sheathe with a quick click. "A wall of fire, maybe," she said, turning away at the sound of four wheels clunking against compact soil. Her transport was here. "I should go."

"Avraja, General," Cailen ducked his head at her, remembering to call her the proper way for once. "I'll see you home?"

The cart slowed down a few meters off her feet, brought about by the driver's forceful yank of the reins and a pained neigh of a dagrine. "I'll see you in Xai-Ren," she corrected, staking hold of the cart's door handles. "Avraja."

She yanked at the metal bar, the hinges whining against her force. Before the cart halted completely, the dim, wooden gullet swallowed her. Within seconds, she felt the ground rumble and lurch forward, carrying her towards the beginning of the mission.

It's a long way from Ok-Sa to the first fortress, so Canelis retreated to the corner of the cart and called on her magic. A burst of light followed the rush of warmth underneath her skin as she molded the bright particles into a sphere without walls and let it hang overhead. It exposed the crates accompanying her and guided her way towards the one nearest her. She ripped off the lid and stuck her hand into its depths. Her fingers closed around the device she had been working on since forever.

When she drew the small, rectangular cask out, the faint smell of odian wafted in the air. She wrinkled her nose at the rusty tang infiltrating her senses. If everything worked out today, she'd be rid of this smell for eternity. No way she'd tolerate this anywhere inside Peltra.

Because she had seen what it could do with just a small spark. The espionage papers leaked by the Varkas impostor were right about one thing: this dark powder was an abomination. Their plan for this attack was a combination of the old renegade operations courtesy of Cailen, some parts of the Peltran military procedures, and a little blend of Xanthiene Vivenca's out-of-the-crate line of thought, and most of it relied on their knowledge and usage of the very thing sitting with Canelis inside this cart.

It was hard to find a pixie seller who would pass by from Cardina and into Yin-Alora. Most of them were in Calca this time of the year, and almost none would bother passing through Peltra after news of its fall traveled across the trading network. Canelis understood that, as these people were only concerned for their profit more than anything else, but Commander Kherol was able to hire one by camping near the trade routes through Oaksham. After careful screening and rounds of interrogation (certainly not threatening, as Cailen preferred calling their methods), they finally got the merchant to agree. While Canelis didn't even know his name or what he looked like, or if he even was a he, she was more than happy to be traveling across a stretch of land without carrying these weapons by hand.

If her father was here, he would probably scold her ear off with the way she handled the plan. Pixies were independent people, and so should their pride and strength, the military and its soldiers, be. With Canelis calling out for help from the merchants, traders, and any nomad pixie who happened to pass by Peltra, it might as well be treason.

But she has proven time and again that the rigid principles didn't work in the face of a larger and more advanced force. The Sovereign wasn't a pixie, and she certainly didn't think like one. Pixies were rigid people, forged from birth to follow orders and defend the people and their hierarchy. Maybe it was the dynasties' fault or someone else's, but it was ingrained into their culture so much that Canelis second-guessed every decision she made as she stepped farther and farther from what was supposed to be.

Cailen's words flitted back to her ears as she wrapped a twine around two halves of the cask, securing them together. Her father wasn't here, and if she was to believe Cailen, she had to find her way to being a leader from here on out. On her own.

No one could help her or tell her who to become. It wasn't a life to live, and maybe there would be less renegades if such applied to the entire pixie population too.

That's why she admired Xanthy and her way of thinking. But didn't it come with its own privilege, being the Virtakios? Xanthy didn't need to take note of her surroundings or how something could go wrong at the slightest touch. She had the power to change literally everything she put her mind on, and if the Ancient texts were right, she could even change fate itself. No wonder the Heiress and the Sovereign were willing to fight it out, wing and soul, just to get access to that kind of power.

What sucked was that those witches thought it was better to involve most, if not the entire island with it.

Canelis picked up the next cask and checked the arrangement of things inside. It wasn't much—a small bag of odian next to a terznite ore filled to the brim with raw magic. One spark from the odian, and the terznite would unleash its rage. And with a multitude of them throughout the fortress? It's hell on Umazure.

That's the point of sending Canelis inside a cart. To lay their traps, they needed to make it inside first. Let her hope the advance party did their job well, rendering the security of the walls useless.

Even that part of the plan depended on the nomadic pixie traders, and Canelis never really appreciated their decision to leave the army and choose the unstable lifestyle of travel and trading until she needed them now. If that's not a hypocrite, she didn't know what else was.

She smoothed out the contents of every crate inside the cart by the time other voices rippled with muffled intensities beyond the wooden planks enclosing her. After making sure everything was ready, she collapsed against a corner. Her fingers were grimy, slicked with sweat and a residue of the dust coating the terznite ores. She probably smelled like damp fur now.

But it didn't matter. After this, she owed herself a nice, long bath.

The merchant driving the cart exchanged words with someone, and with the absence of windows, Canelis couldn't see who it was. Maybe the trader had betrayed them and was instead turning her over to poachers? Would that even be possible? If she recalled a part of the plan, Commander Dithal's platoon was supposed to keep an eye on her along the road.

Soon, the sound of gears cranking and chains clinking resounded. Ah, they got cleared.

Canelis laid a hand on the cart's floor, her fingers feeling every bump and skid the wheels made against the road. When the cart stopped, two knocks rang from the cart's rear. It's time to go.

Light first rimmed the cart's backdoor, only to flood through the hollow space when the merchant yanked it down. Canelis squinted, blinking the dark spots plaguing her vision. It'd pass, and the light was a welcome respite to all the darkness she had lived through the past few weeks.

She crawled out of the cart, pulling the fallen hood of her cloak over her head again. One by one, she and the merchant unloaded the crates from the cart until they've made quite a pile. It's not a new sight, she realized. Tens and hundreds more did the same thing in this part of the fortress. This was the supplies chamber, if she was to find an appropriate name for it.

And if she was to find an appropriate task as a worker in this chamber, she'd better hop to it. So, she took one crate, spread her wings, and dashed towards the nearest wall. Her mind drank in every sliver of her surroundings, from the height of the battlements, the spaces between quadrants, and the flow of people streaming in and out of the supplies chamber.

Once her hands touched the walls, she loosened the crate's bottom and began to work. It wasn't much. She merely needed to plant the series of casks along the corner made by the wall's foot and the ground. Easing it deeper into the soil would be better, but she didn't want to trigger one by accident.

Hours, or at least what felt like hours, went by. She finished one length of the wall before wiping the sweat off her forehead. Her sword was useless by her side. It's a relief, for once. When she turned away from the wall, she spotted a head bobbing from the busy crowd of merchants and Synketrians putting away the supplies and updating inventories. They carried some of Canelis' crates. She only released the breath she held in when she noticed the person crouch down and started doing the same thing she did. It seemed like the advance platoon dropped in to help.

If they could handle it, it's time for Canelis to proceed to the second part of the plan.

She craned her neck up at the battlements. Her wings unfurled behind her, and with a strong flap, she soared upward. By the time her boots touched down on the walls' walkway, the soldier standing guard fell face-first to the ground. She sheathed her sword to her side with a huff. These witches, for all the trouble they put her people into, couldn't even stay upright after one surprise blow.

Her attention snapped to the operation happening below. She tracked familiar faces from high up, watching them lay more and more of the explosives beyond the supplies chamber. It seemed like Commander Neradan's soldiers did their part.

When she shifted her fingers bracing the crenelations, her fingers brushed against brittle wires lining the inner part of the wall. She knitted her eyebrows, running her hands along the length, tracing them across the bricks and mortar. They ended in boxes slotted under the crossbows. With gritted teeth, Canelis peeled back the boxes' lids, and a stack of darts greeted her. She followed the path of the wires and noticed some went through the walls. Could it be...?

She drew a sharp blade from her boots and struck at the brittle mortar holding the bricks together. As expected, a panel loosened, and it showed her a mechanism of gears and more wires slotted inside the hollow space inside the walls. It became clear to her, then. The reason why the darts seemed to come out of nowhere but the walls was because of these systems. One panel would slide back to launch a dart through it, only to shut again as another panel would do its job. Repeat it enough times, and one would have succeeded in forming an aerial defense mechanism.

This level of workmanship, this...ingenuity—it could only come from the brownies. What did the Sovereign do to Alkara to get her hands on technology such as this?

Canelis gritted her teeth and stuck the blade back to where she retrieved it. Then, she checked in on her people's progress. Some of them made it to where she couldn't see them from her place in the supply chamber. If she wanted to track them, she'd have to keep up through the battlements.

The next part of the plan was to make sure none of their people were inside. To do that, they'd have to disable most of the guards blocking their way before judgment fell on them. She dashed forward, keeping her hands on her sword. No one got in her way save for that moronic soldier still collapsed on the battlements. It's strange. Almost as if...

Her blood chilled when she reached the bend of the supply chambers and another part of the fortress spread below her. Thousands of the fortress' soldiers gathered there, lying in wait. Their weapons flashed silver against the afternoon sun, their expressions determined to drive out their enemies.

A curse flitted out of Canelis' lips. They stood on the way to their planned exit point, where the rest of the army waited for them in case they were chased out. She glanced at the soldiers from the supply chambers making their way towards the neighboring quadrant, only sticking to the plan. They would find an ambush lying in wait for them, and she couldn't have that.

Her teeth dug into her lips as she popped a pocket on her belt open and drew out an emergency flare. With a spark from her magic, she threw it up to the sky where it exploded in a shower of red and gold light.

It was a warning, but it was also a message.

She just ordered all of her soldiers to attack.