...Roble Holy Kingdom...East of Hoburns…

"So you were going to kill those men?" Fluder said, looking at Skana with a mixture of indifferent curiosity.

"Yes." She answered as they went and collected their mounts.

"Why didn't you?" He asked, "Was it because of the accords? Was it out of loyalty to master? Was it for yourself? Or something else?" He asked.

"You're the curious one all of a sudden." Skana remarked.

"Well, I don't really care about them or anything, I'd have been just as comfortable if you killed the lot. But usually when people make that decision, they don't go back on it the way you did." He said thoughtfully.

"I see." She said as the formation reassembled and started to ride west. She thought for a moment, just looking ahead of her. "I wish I had killed them." She said quietly.

"Oh?" He asked, cocking his head to one side.

"And that is what bothers me, I've gotten very good at killing, I'm a better swordswoman than Neia is, I killed Braunin, a hero three times my weight, in under a minute. I took down several men before they could even make up their minds about whether to fight or not. I've gotten very...very good at this, and I haven't felt a single thing about it in I don't know how long." She said reflectively.

"Were you a soldier before joining Neia or something?" He asked offhandedly, and paused as Skana started to laugh uproariously.

Skana barely managed to get out her explanation through her laughter. "Oh no, my parents were peasants. My father chopped wood and did a little carpentry, he had a little skill as a hunter, but nothing great; he came home without meat more often than he came home with it. My mother, she was a seamstress, on a good day you could even call her a dress maker."

"Then how…?" He began to ask.

"Did I get to this?" She asked, turning her body to look at him. She was lean and strong, if there was a weakness in her body, the one eyed auburn haired woman didn't show it.

"It's just one of those things. I was kind of a slut when I was young." She snickered at her own past, "I'm taller than the average girl, not like Gagaran or anything, but a little above average, always was, and even before I got...well, to look like this, I was a beautiful girl, especially with both eyes." She winked at the old mage with her good one and cracked a smile.

"Not much to do in a village you know, so whatever you get in the habit of doing, you do kind of a lot, and while I had a lot of fun with the boys...and the girls, who didn't much care for me, except for the ones who really liked me a lot." She winked again and stuck out her tongue teasingly.

"I didn't always do it the right way. I set my sights on a married man, to this day I still sigh and think of how beautiful a man he was. Maybe I'm remembering him wrong now though, it has been years since he died, memory does that, doesn't it?" She asked him seriously.

Fluder stroked his beard, "I think so, I don't trust many of my recollections except for encountering the traveling magic caster who came to my village. The rest? Who knows?" He said indifferently.

Skana looked ahead and gave a sigh that could only be described as 'romantic'. "Maybe I'll never remember his face properly, it might already be wrong, but he'll always have been beautiful in my mind. Anyway, I told him where to meet me in the woods, and he never showed up, I waited, then...the village began to scream. I watched from the woods as everybody died, and I hated myself for watching, I hated myself for living, I hated myself for running, and I hated myself for 'why' I was living." She clenched her fists on the pommel of her saddle and gritted her teeth.

"Jaldabaoth's invasion." He said, not asked.

"Yes. I checked the place after they were gone." She said with a futile smile. "Of course, no luck, my village was dead, the only people to survive were a handful of travelers who'd come there to visit the woods for herbs and other materials that grew near where we lived. They lost their goods, I lost my life." Her chest fell and she looked down.

"If I hadn't been an adulterous bitch who wanted a good man to step out on his wife, I'd have been dead. That was when I knew there were no gods anymore." She laughed again, though it was more a mad laugh than anything else, with her face tilted up towards the sky as if to mock the gods she had rejected.

"If they were going to have spared anyone, it shouldn't have been me. Up to that age I hadn't had a useful thought in my life. I was a good dancer, very good, if I do say so myself, a good lay, and… an empty head. I had no dreams, no ambitions, no desires beyond the moment, I thought I'd just step into a marriage at some point, breed like the cattle our noble thought of us as, and work there until I died while having as much pointless fun along the way as I could. Can you name another person more useless?" Skana asked him seriously.

He didn't answer.

"Probably not. So a few others and I ran, we hid for weeks, and that was when we first heard the rumors that another king had come to save our country. Survivors like us, out in the wilderness kept a network going, always on the run, not just from the demihumans, but we avoided the resistance too, not wanting to be pressed into the fight. How useless." She spat at the dirt as they rode along.

"At first we just thought 'great, two invasions', but as the stories spread, we gained hope, then we gained confidence. And that got most of us killed and it got me caught. We went too close, raided a camp that the resistance had liberated, looking for any supplies, only to be captured by a demihuman patrol sent to investigate what happened there. The others were all caught, killed, and eaten. I was good at hiding by then, but not great, because they found me later and took me to another camp. The demihumans there would make us 'vote' on who would get eaten. Can you guess how I survived and avoided getting 'voted' into the stew pot?" She asked.

"I have an idea." He said dryly.

"Yeah, my old hobby kept me alive because even in those conditions, well you know, and the thing is, it let me forget where we were for a little while. I could pretend I was back in my village, out in the woods with some pretty farm girl or handsome traveler. What an origin story for 'Skana the Bold', the second deadliest of the famous one hundred elites, isn't it?" She laughed mockingly at herself again.

"Then we got rescued, and that was the first time I saw Neia Baraja. She didn't even have her famous green armor then, but she had her bow, and she seemed so strong, so brave, just this tiny, diminutive thing that was younger than I was, walking beside the massive body of the Sorcerer King. She seemed to fear nothing, and I hated her for it." Skana shook her head at her own stupidity.

"I followed the rest of them when we got out, went with her, and him, because what else were we going to do? I heard her speeches and her proclamations about the Sorcerer King, by then I knew she was his squire, and thought she must be a monster, with eyes like that. What else but a monster could walk with a monster?" Skana asked rhetorically.

"I heard her speak a lot, by coincidence at first, then I sought out her talks, just so I could glare at her and hate her. I hated her for being able to fight, I hated her for being beside someone strong, I hated her like I hated Jaldabaoth. By the time the siege happened I was almost happy, because I thought I'd see that smug bitch scared like the rest of us, without the Sorcerer King to protect her. But she went to the wall." Skana finished her statement with a voice of absolute admiration.

"She went up to the wall where the fighting was thickest, I watched, from behind, from down on the ground. I couldn't miss her in that magnificent armor she'd gotten after the rescue, so it was easy to see, and I always did have a keen set of eyes, well, till I misplaced one." She snickered and tapped her eyepatch.

"I thought she'd run like a coward and a hypocrite, I thought she'd die like a dog. But instead...she was magnificent, it was like watching a legend, every time she drew her bow, demihumans died and they shrank from her in terror, she wasn't afraid, or if she was, it didn't stop her. She was the embodiment of terror and fear and courage, no matter how many wounds she took...it wasn't enough, I had to keep wiping my eyes then because she was doing all that so my stupid, worthless, cowardly, emptyheaded self could live. All those wounds, all that pain she had to feel and she just kept going. I saw when her eyes were taken from her, but it still wasn't enough, not until a half a dozen of them stabbed her all at once. She was the last one alive on the wall, and even though she was blind, battered, bleeding, and barely on her feet, she put fear into the ones who treated us like food."

"I couldn't hate her anymore, I'd stopped hating her when I realized she was so...so noble. Even our royalty wouldn't venture where she would, and even paladins who went, died before her. She became my hero and died immediately after. I prayed to the gods I didn't believe in that it wasn't true that someone that valiant could die." Skana's one good eye was dry no more as she told the story, and Fluder, normally only interested in magic, found he could still enjoy a good heroic epic, especially one where their master was involved.

"She was definitely dead though, and then I realized that even if the old gods were gone, there was a new god in the world. He brought her back, she was up and walking around in no time, which is supposedly impossible as I know now, yet not only did she get back up, she was training again in no time. I then started attending all her speeches. I went to every training session, pressing myself harder than a paladin. It turned out that my dancing days had their uses as I was nimble, flexible, and I had an undiscovered talent for the sword that would carry me through the rest of the war. I wasn't a frontliner, but the skills I developed hiding from the demihumans, the resistance, and navigating the woods, all made me a passable scout. By then, I had given up on any other lovers, there was only one I wanted to come close to, but I had to deserve to be there first. I caught her attention a time or two before she really started to notice me, and now, here I am. Hundreds of corpses later, a commander alone, a vice commander when I'm with her." She smiled warmly.

"It bothers me that I'm this comfortable with killing, but getting good at killing is more or less what got her attention, I'll just have to be careful not to go too far. But I've got good soldiers, they'll be my conscience, even if my own isn't where it used to be." She said, then looked up at the Sun.

"Oh, wow, it's getting kind of late isn't it?" She said as she saw it descending in the distance.

"It will be dark soon, and we should get a camp prepared. I want to get to Prart as soon as possible, I want to find out if she's going to say yes." Skana said with a little, thoughtful smile on her face as she raised a fist to call for a halt. "Lay a camp and set a watch, you get five hours of sleep and then we move!" She shouted to the formation behind her.

...West of Hoburns…

Astraka was in a positive mood for once. He spat in the river that stupid peasant had been dumped into, that had been part of his regular routine, and it always made him happier. It was at least a tiny part of why he'd chosen this route of march, this road ran by that river, so every day he could spit into the water that her corpse was rotting in. That happiness seldom lasted, but today it did, he was moving to Prart in earnest to support Remedios and Suchala, and with their combined arms, they were sure to take the city.

Setback after setback had bedeviled him since he'd taken that girl, and he still gnashed his teeth over her final absurd act of suicidal defiance, like she'd cursed him from beyond or something. If he were being honest with himself, he admitted he still felt a little guilty about that, guilty enough that he'd donated the coin's he'd taken from her to a temple. "It had to be done, a king doesn't have the luxury of doing the right thing when his people are on the line." He said, repeating a sentence he'd learned in his childhood. Whatever happened, he could not allow Calca's disastrous rule to return. Calca, Caspond, Handor, none of them had been fit to rule. It was his time, his turn, and nobody was going to bar the way.

So as he listened to the clip clop noise of horse hooves over ground, he contemplated all the ways he would improve the kingdom when he'd crushed the Calcan loyalists. He'd have to play nice with the Theocracy in rebuilding, but he had no intention of following them into a prolonged war with the Sorcerer Kingdom. He'd make peace as soon as it would be to his advantage.

He stroked his strong jaw and thick brown beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps I can offer amnesty to the Sorcerer King's worshipers in exchange for fending of Calcan extremists. Remedios isn't likely to let go of her rule, even if we are allies for now." He said softly to himself. "Fortunately she's an idiot, if Calca should die and the Sorcerer King is blamed, she'll probably go get herself killed somewhere far away from here, leaving me unopposed."

It was a pleasant thought, but not one without potential complications.

He looked at the sky, rain was starting to fall, that was going to make the march unpleasant, but not impossible. He didn't mind, he enjoyed rain like this even if most others didn't, "Tears of the gods, wash our sins away." He whispered to the sky, intoning a prayer to the god of water. It was like being baptised in their blessing all over again, and that was when he caught a lucky break.

As his army marched, a somewhat portly man, riding alone on the road, moved out of the way, off the road so that the army could move past him. But something felt 'off'. Fear he could understand, anyone with any sense stayed out of the way of an army, but when he'd been about to salute Astraka, the portly traveler had hesitated, and redid his salute to the crown. It took only a split second for Astraka to realize what the man had been about to instinctively render. The salute used by Black Justice. He whirled his horse around and pointed at the traveler, "Capture that one!" Astraka shouted in fury. The man had a momentary look of panic on his face and he spurred his horse into a desperate gallop, but arrows were faster, and the horse fell with a hundred arrows in its side. It toppled over, and the rider with it. He screamed, some of those arrows had hit the leg facing the army, the other leg was pinned under the horse, it might have been crushed, or only broken, but either way it would be Astraka's healers who would be determining that. Astraka let out a contented smile, wondering what the gods had blessed him with today.

The soldiers dragged him screaming and struggling from under the dead beast, his eyes were wild with pain, pain that nobody cared to deal with as they dragged his bleeding and broken legs over the ground to where he could be secured and questioned.

...South of Re-Estize…

King Zanac looked at the city he'd been forced to abandon, it was clearly intact, at least the walls were, he checked the battlements, they were very lightly manned. The gates, however, were closed. Somehow he wasn't surprised. He looked over at General Nimble. "You look like you're seeing something unexpected." He said.

"Well, I honestly expected them to surrender right away." General Nimble looked at the gate as if he was willing it to open.

"We can't be too surprised." Princess Renner said, "After all, while Philip was a moron of the highest caliber and didn't really trust anyone, there were some he distrusted less than others, and surely he'd put those in charge while he was gone."

"So you think they'll make a fight of it after all?" Brain asked reluctantly.

"They can't, can they?" Climb asked in horror, "They'd really throw the capital away, all those lives, just to remain in power for one hour more?" He stared at the walls as if he couldn't imagine why they hadn't parted all on their own, just to spite the incompetents behind them.

"If they could, they would, but nobody will die for these idiots." King Zanac said.

"What do you plan to do?" General Nimble asked him with curiosity.

"Why, a duel between champions." He had a sly expression on his face, "If we win, they open the gates and surrender, and I'll even give them a royal pardon They'll be exiled from court of course, but with a little place to live, far from the reins of power, they should be content."

"Will they really accept that?" Brain asked in disbelief.

"Maybe, right now the capital is held hostage, and if my dear brother attacks, he'll be the king who killed his own for power. His desire to avoid that legacy is the only card they have left to play now." Renner said sagaciously as she looked at the walls. The men up top were nervous, frightened, she could tell that from where she stood just by the way they fidgeted, it was that obvious.

Climb clenched his jaw, "So they'll throw someone else's life away in a duel, just to save their own skins? Scumbags." He said hatefully.

"True, but...at least someone there has half a brain." General Nimble said with some disappointment.

"Climb, would you go and make the offer?" King Zanac commanded him with the polite 'request'.

"As you wish your highness." Climb said and rode up close to the gate holding a white flag of truce. He shouted the terms up to the men atop the tower, even from where they sat out of easy bowshot, they could hear the cheers from the wall.

Eventually the gate opened, and the chosen champion emerged.

"Shall I handle it, your highness?" Brain asked.

"Would you, Brain? Thank you." King Zanac said politely, and brain rode up. He went to the space thirty yards from the walls and faced the man who would be his opponent.

"You? You're going to fight me?" Brain asked, baffled. What looked at him was a boy that couldn't have been older than fourteen.

The boy gave him a quick, flashing smile. "Well, I volunteered."

"Are you suicidal? Insane?" Brain asked, mildly concerned.

The boy laughed. "Hell no."

"You think you can win?" Brain asked in disbelief.

"Also hell no." The boy replied.

"Then why…?" Brain asked, "Do you owe them a favor or something?"

"Double hell no, those rat bastards don't do favors for people like me." He snorted in disgust.

"So…" Brain was tapping his katana on his shoulder in bafflement.

"Oh," the boy's eyes lit up, "they asked for a champion and nobody offered, they tried ordering people and those resigned, so I offered to do it on four conditions."

"And those are?" Brain asked, now very interested.

The boy held up one hand, "The first is that they wait there." He held up one finger. "The second is that if I win, I get five bags of gold." He held up a second finger. "The third is that if I lose and die, my mother gets three bags of gold." He held up a third finger, "The fourth is that if I lose and live, I get three bags of gold." He held up his fourth finger. "So, here's the deal, Mr. Champion, you knock me down and I surrender, then I'll give you one of the bags after I collect it. I never promised them I'd win, and I definitely never promised I'd fight well. It isn't my fault they were stupid enough to accept a thirteen-year-old volunteer for this." He gave a big, clever grin to Brain, and Brain burst out laughing.

"I like you kid, it's a deal." He said, "I'll even let you put on a little show first, give me a few overhead swings, I'll back up a few paces, then bam, I'll knock you down, sound good?" He asked the boy.

"You got it, you don't have to knock me out, I'll drop my sword when I 'fall'. Easiest gold ever." He said with a smug expression over his shoulder at the city behind him.

They drew swords, and once, twice, three times the boy swung, and just as promised, Brain sped behind him and hit him in the center of his back, sending him stumbling forward, and he fell on his face, his sword went tumbling away. Brain stood over him with the katana's tip inches from the young man's face.

"Surrender?" He asked with a conspiratorial smile.

"You betcha." The boy said, and shouted his yield to the walls, as the gate began to open, Brain held out his hand to help the boy up.

As the boy took it and was pulled to his feet, he rubbed his back, "Could have just tapped it you know."

Brain shrugged, "Risks of the job, kid. So, what's your name anyway, I'd like to spend one of my 'hard earned' coins buying you a drink later."

"My friends call me 'Alden'." He said as he stood up straight, "And you are?"

"Brain Unglaus." Brain said with his customary carefree and charming expression.

"Nice to meet you to Brain, hey if it isn't to much to ask, could you teach me how to use that thing some time?" Alden asked, pointing to his sword that he'd left in the dirt, before bending over to pick it up.

"I think we can set that up, drink first, lessons second. Come with me, we'll get you a spare horse so you can ride in with us and I'll make sure you get your reward so I can spend some of it on you." Brain said, and they shared a hearty laugh.

They were friends for the rest of their lives.

The procession into the capital went very smoothly, feeble protests about not opening the gate from 'somewhere' were first ignored, then silenced by means nobody ever cared to find out, and the army of Re-Estize and their supporting forces of the Baharuth Empire and the Sorcerous Kingdom marched in behind them.

History would record that it was the King of Re-Estize who would first walk through it's gate again, that much King Zanac was making certain of. The walk through the streets were a reminder, after having seen the prosperity of E-Rantel, of how much the capital of the Kingdom was lacking, and it had only gotten worse under the rule of Philip and his incompetent lackeys.

They made it to the palace where a handful of pampered, foppish, fearful, incompetent looking nobles stood. Even their faces all but screamed 'I wonder how a button fits through a button hole', they were simply that dense even to the naked eye.

King Zanac guessed that they were the only people Philip could find who were dumber than he was.

"As you might guess," King Zanac said, speaking first, "your champion lost. You are allowed to leave with your lives, but you are banished from court. This is your only pardon; your estates are forfeit, your rank is stripped from you, and you will live the rest of your lives as peasants. I will elevate worthy men and women from your own estates to replace yourselves."

One of the nobles fainted straight away, several others wept and cursed, but none of them had the courage to even lash out, they preferred the path of toddlers denied a plaything. It was the opposite of nobility in every way. King Zanac went and sat on the throne again.

"Now get these 'things' out of my palace." He said, and gestured to a throne near to him. "Sister, would you sit?" He asked.

"Happily, dear brother." Renner said with a sweet, innocent smile on her face. "Climb, please take your position as my bodyguard again, and everything will begin to be as it should be, again." She smiled sweetly as could be at the smiling blond young man. "He's mine, he's mine, he'll be all mine forever, nobody will ever take him from me again, no one, no one, NO ONE!" She thought, as he walked over to where she sat smiling at him, and took position one step behind her.

"Your majesty, one small thing?" Brain asked as the desperate wailing former nobles struggled in futility.

"Yes?" King Zanac inquired.

"Their 'champion' Alden was promised three bags of gold if he fought for them and survived. He did fight, and he did survive." Brain pointed out. The former nobles froze and looked at Brain and the King in horror.

King Zanac rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "Well, they have nothing left to repay him with, but we'll confiscate what they're wearing, sell it off, and then as a gesture of good will, I will pay the difference out to the boy as a 'loan' on behalf of these men, and they can pay it back through labor in the places we send them to live after this."

The fops howled at the now impossible sum of money that they would never be able to pay back, but the howls they let loose were drowned out by the laughter that surrounded them.

AN: Dear readers...IF you have a question...it would really help if you'd turn on you pm or not leave it as an anonymous guest. I promise I'm not thin skinned, so I can handle criticism and I don't consider it annoying or pushy to get questions in the inbox. I can't take the time to answer everyone of course, but I definitely can't answer people who make it impossible to answer. :D OK, hope you enjoyed that, leave a review blah blah blah and see you next week with another chapter. :)