Happy Mammoth Monday!
I have to say that there was a lot more support behind Mercury than I had expected at this point(seriously, I had expected everyone to pretty much think that he was a ruthless villainous bastard by now).

And so, here comes the raid. May it be successful...or not, though I would not be so cruel to my characters, right?...right?

The raid

Loivissa POV
There was something magical about Du Weldenvarden. Well, the ancient forest had always been magical, but it still seemed more vibrant, more alive, right after a downpour. The greenness of the pines seemed to be more distinguished when the water droplets transformed and changed the rays of light, and the scent of pines was intensified and made Loivissa think of her mother.

"Reminds you of mother, does it not?", Evandar mimicked her thoughts from beside her.

"This is neither the time nor the place for your mind to wander", Loivissa snapped at her brother, though she had not initially meant to.

The memory of her mother made her sad, because she knew that both her mother and father had been murdered more than a year ago, and she had yet to actually say farewell to their graves in Estildirin. Her negligence was not so much because of not being able to find the time to make the trip, though that was also a problem, but more because visiting their graves would make their deaths seem more real.

Loivissa could not afford to lay yet another sorrow on her heart, especially not since she was still separated from her beloved Adûn. She was needed too much elsewhere for her to allow herself to break down even the slightest.

"Why do you always seem so angry whenever anyone speaks to you these days?", Evandar questioned with a scowl.

"I am not angry", Loivissa snapped.

At that moment, she was immensely thankful for placing Lord Tahu and Lifael on the other side of the road, with Vanir being further ahead as their scout. It meant that none of them could listen in on the private fight that would no doubt start in a moment.

"You just proved my point", Evandar snorted, before a hurtful expression crossed his face, "I just wish that my sister would come back; the sister that used to tease me and giggle at my follies, the sister that smiled and danced, the sister that actually felt. You hardly ever do any of these things anymore, and it worries those that knew you and frightens those that did not".

"When was the last time that we had anything to laugh about?", Loivissa shot back, "ever since this invasion started, I have either been a prisoner of war, on the run or had other duties to take care of. I have watched my friends get killed, had to hear from Mercury's own mouth how our parents were dead, been forced to separate from my partner-of-heart-and-mind and had to keep everyone together after you broke down.

I know what Delvaria meant to you, so I do not blame you for doing as you did, but did it ever even once occur to you that I was hurting too? Did you ever think about what would have happened if I had allowed myself to break down as you did?"

Loivissa could see that her words had cut deeper than she had meant for them to, Evandar was after all still too valuable to break down moments before they had to ambush the wagon train, but the gates that barred the pent-up resentment had been opened and it had poured out all at once.

"…I guess that I never thought about that", her brother admitted guiltily, "it is just, I feel like the sister that I knew is disappearing bit by bit and being replaced by a stranger in her skin. I do not want to lose you as well".

"You will not", Loivissa assured him, "but we need to stop Mercury, and to do that, I cannot allow myself to be soft".

She could see that he was about to say something when he stopped for a moment, before he hesitantly said, "Vanir has just spotted the wagon train a little ways up the road…he says that it is driven by elves".

Loivissa now understood the reason behind his apprehension; it had been half a millennium since elves had last killed elves in cold blood, and it was not at all certain whether Lord Tahu and Lifael would agree to proceeding with the plan with this information.

She knew that Vanir would, as he had no choice in the matter, but unlike her brother and herself, Lifael had been raised in Du Weldenvarden before becoming a rider, so his sense of elven lineage was rooted much deeper. Lord Tahu had been the lord of Kirtan since not so long ago, so his willingness to join in was the most questionable of them all.

"Tell the others that we cannot afford to let this chance pass us by", Loivissa ordered, "we have to make sacrifices if we are to win this war".

A while passed before her brother confirmed that the two had agreed to proceed, although hesitantly, and in the meantime, Loivissa had told Vanir to continue monitoring the road. They were close enough to Osilon that patrols might walk by once in a while, which would make the drivers lower their guards, but they were still far enough away for the patrols not to be regular.

It did not take long after that before the sounds coming from the wagon train could be heard. The wheels were sloshing through the holes of mud in the dirt road, and the neighing of the horses pulling the wagons could occasionally be heard.

Loivissa counted six wagons in total, and all of them had canvases over their cargo, though only four of them looked to be transporting barrels. The front wagon had two elves sitting and chatting on the driver's seat, with one holding the reins and the other polishing his wooden bow with oil. The one after that only had a single person driving it, while the one after that contained a male elf that drove the wagon and a female elf that slept with her head in his lap.

As Loivissa finished sweeping her eyes over the wagon train, she counted a total of eleven elves, but only six of them even looked to be carrying weapons at the time, and those that had weapons on them did not look very alert.

It was good, because with only four people there to ambush the party, Loivissa's group heavily relied on the element of surprise to overcome these elves. If their cover was blown, then this would turn ugly very quickly.

"Tell the others to pick their targets from the last three wagons and to wait with firing until my arrow strikes", Loivissa whispered to her brother while knocking an arrow on her bow.

"Are you sure about this?", Evandar whispered after forwarding the message and knocking his own arrow, "these are regular people that are just trying to get by. They have nothing to do with Mercury or his rule".

"Sacrifices will have to be made. It is all Mercury's fault for hiring them to do this", Loivissa answered as she took aim at the one with the bow at the front, "trust me, the people of Alagaësia will thank us for freeing them from his tyrannical grip".

"…These people will not", Evandar commented with a sigh, but he picked out and aimed at his target anyway.

Loivissa took one last breath to steel her nerves and quiet her consciousness, before she let the arrow fly directly into the chest of the man that was in the midst of polishing his bow with oil. In a single moment, his expression changed from laughing at something the other one had said to cringing in pain, confusion and fear.

Loivissa did not wait for the other arrows to hit their marks before she grabbed her sword, which had been buried hilt up in the ground before her to allow for an easy switch, and stormed out to charge the driver of the first wagon.

He did not even have time to more than stare dumbly at her before his head had been chopped off by Loivissa's sword. A quick and painless death was all the mercy that she could afford to show these innocents.

When she turned around to gauge the rest of the fight, she saw arrows sticking out of the chest of two other male elves and a female one, whom had not been dealt a fatal blow by the arrow, but was nonetheless still out of commission for this fight.

Her brother and the other two had already dispatched another three elves in their initial charge, but the remaining three had used the extra time to arm themselves and were actively fighting back against their assailants.

Loivissa snuck up behind one of them and stabbed him from behind while he was parrying Lord Tahu's blows, which seemed a little weaker than they should have been to Loivissa, before the two of them joined the other two in fighting the last two members of the wagon train's crew.

Despite fighting two against one, and with Loivissa and Lord Tahu constantly trying to get on the blind side of their respective opponents, the two were putting up a valiant effort. They had been trained well in the arts of war, and Loivissa wondered whether the two might be retired veterans from a city guard, but in the end, there was simply nothing that either of them could do to stop what was coming.

The one that Loivissa was not duelling, fell due to a lucky opening that was exploited by Evandar, and when both Evandar and Lord Tahu joined against the last one, she too fell shortly afterwards.

For a while, no one moved as they all simply watched the bodies of their fallen opponents. Loivissa remembered how she had watched the two before her on the wagon, how the woman had slept with her head in the man's lap and seemed utterly peaceful and content.

They looked as if they might have been siblings, but looks could be deceiving with elves, so she could not be sure. What if they had been lovers? What if Loivissa's actions had resulted in the deaths of two innocent people that had found love and whose only crime had been to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?

As the thought of them being mates took root in her mind, an even more disturbing thought prodded at her conscious. What if the woman had been with child? She did not show the signs of it yet, but what if it had only been a short while ago since the child had been conceived? There was no sure way of either confirming or denying the option at this point.

A pained cry broke her out of her thoughts and directed her attention to the woman that had only been incapacitated with an arrow. Her companions' attentions were likewise torn away from the two corpses, and together, the four walked over to the woman that had only just managed to crawl up to one of the wagon's wheels, which she leaned back on as she sat on the ground.

"You!?", she said with both confusion and anger, as she recognized one of their faces. Loivissa did not know which one, but she knew what had to be done.

"Shh, it is okay. It will be over soon", Loivissa said as she sat down before the woman and drew her dagger form her belt.

"What!? No, sister, wait!", her brother tried to stop her, but she had already finished the movement and given the elven woman as clean and painless a death as possible.

"She was unarmed and no threat to us", Lifael said with accusation lacing his voice, "she could have lived for long enough for a patrol to come by and pick her up".

"No one can be allowed to know of what we did here today", Loivissa said as she rose and put the still bloodied dagger away, "as long as there are no witnesses, this incident will be chalked up to bandits. Our enemy will know that it was not, but we cannot allow the common people to learn of what we have had to do in order to free them, or they would surely lose faith in us and the justification of our cause".

"I know that, but still…", Lord Tahu said with a sigh, "it just seems…wrong".

"It is because it is, but we cannot afford to dawdle anymore. Begin checking the wagons to see which one of them carries the wheat", Loivissa switched to the common tongue and ruthlessly ordered, but though the two others hesitantly did as they were told, Evandar remained for long enough to catch her gaze with his.

She knew that he knew from their earlier conversation that she was just as disgusted and ashamed of what they had just done, what she had just done to that woman, as the rest of them, but that she was suppressing those emotions for the sake of their cause.

A short nod with thinly pressed lips was all she received before he too moved to carry out her orders. Soon enough, everyone began peeling back the canvasses to check the wagons' contents. The first and second one contained nails, metal tools and other equipment used for foresting, hunting, cooking and building.

The one after those was filled with furs of all kinds, and Loivissa guessed that it had been used to sleep in by the crew of the wagon train. Lifael called that the last one contained nothing but dried and salted meat, as well as other seasoned food, and Lord Tahu confirmed that the one before mostly held the same.

"I have got it here", her brother exclaimed from the last unchecked wagon, "three columns and nine rows of barrels that looks to be filled with nothing but wheat grains".

"That is the one that we are looking for!", Loivissa concurred, "what else is in the wagon?"

"Nothing but some spare clothes", Lifael answered after he had hopped up on the wagon, "what exactly are we looking after?"

"I do not know", Loivissa admitted.

She should have known that Mercury would never just have put whatever he was transporting out in plain sight for everyone to see, and looking for it was not made any easier by not knowing what it actually looked like.

"You mean to tell me that we have no idea of what we are after?!", Lifael angrily demanded to know.

"It was important enough for him to prefer this sort of secrecy instead of using his own men to get it out, so it must have been something very important", Loivissa countered, "start emptying the barrels to search them".

Still muttering under their breaths, everyone began the tedious work of pouring out all the grain to check whether anything had been hidden inside of them. To their great dismay, there only seemed to be wheat grains in the barrels, and none of them had any false bottoms either.

"Search the wagon and check whether there are any hidden compartments", Loivissa ordered, but they could find no openings or other things to indicate that a secret compartment could be opened anywhere on the wagon.

As time passed and hope began to dwindle, the protests that there was nothing in the wagon grew louder and louder, but Loivissa managed to silence them by having everyone but her check the other wagons, like they had with the one with the barrels.

It had been a desperate act, as Loivissa distinctly remembered Ilumëo telling her that it would be in the one with the wheat grains, but she could not afford to show her growing fear that she had been set up. She had to keep the others' spirits high and make sure that the thought that those eleven elves had died for nothing did not take root in their minds.

She would not have dared to set me up, would she? True, she did not actually speak in the Ancient language when she told me of this, but she had to understand the consequences that were to occur if she tried to fool me, Loivissa mused anxiously, her fright seemed so real. It could not have been an act, could it?

She was brought out of her thoughts by Vanir contacting her mentally, and once she had allowed him entrance, he frantically said, there is a large patrol of Osilon city guards heading in your direction. Are you done yet?

No, we are still searching, she admitted angrily, how long until they arrive?

Perhaps ten to fifteen minutes, Vanir replied, you better clear out of there before then.

Barzûl, fifteen minutes was too short of a time to give any but a fleeting hope that they might find what they were looking for, and Loivissa just knew that it would not be in one of the wagons that the others were searching at this moment.

Angrily, she drew her sword and slammed it deep into the railing on of the wagon before her with all of her strength. It cut clean through the first bit of wood, but then it suddenly stopped with a shudder going up Loivissa's arm from the impact and the distinct sound of metal hitting metal reaching her ears.

"What happened?!", Evandar asked concerned, but Loivissa did not answer him immediately.

Of course, it made sense now. They had been looking for hidden compartments that could be opened and closed at will by anyone that knew of their secret; the kind often used by smugglers. Mercury however, was not a smuggler.

He could easily afford to have the entire wagon constructed around whatever metal-object lay in there, but without adding any hidden doors or openings to get the object out again by anyone that found it. If it had reached its final destination, he would most likely have simply had the wagon torn apart to get to the stuff inside, because after all, what was the cost of a single wagon to someone that controlled such vast amounts of wealth?

"Everyone, tear open the side of this wagon!", Loivissa quickly commanded, but she knew that they would never make it in time, so she contacted Vanir again, can you delay the patrol for a while?

How much time do you need?, Vanir asked confused.

As much as you can give us, Loivissa answered, we just found the cargo, but it will take some time to get it out.

…I will try my best then, he said and cut off the connection, at which point, Loivissa turned to the others and said, "Vanir is distracting a patrol of guards heading in our direction, so we have to hurry!"

That quickly seemed to increase everyone's pace twofold, and soon after, though not as soon as Loivissa could have wished, the entire side had been ripped off and the hidden contents revealed.

Inside the hollow space in the railing of the wagon, there was an iron casket, which was a little over a metre long, approximately half a metre wide and 30 cm high. It had multiple chains going around it with just as many locks on both the chains themselves and the lid of the casket. A little prodding revealed that the chains and locks were enchanted to make sure that they could not be opened with magic.

When Evandar tried to retrieve it, he only managed to pull it out of the wagon before his arms gave out, and with a thud, it landed heavily on the ground, where it left a deep mark where it had landed. It was heavy, Loivissa realized, far heavier than they could expect just one or two people to carry, even if they all had elven strength.

It was at that moment that Vanir pushed through the foliage with a worried and surprised expression on his face from seeing them still there. His sword was drawn, and Loivissa noted that a trickle of blood ran down the length of it, which made her silently mourn for yet another innocent life lost.

"They are right behind me, we have to go NOW!", he shouted.

"We will never be able to outrun them while carrying this", Evandar commented, "we would need at least four people just to be able to jog with it".

Nononono, it was not fair that they got this far, only to have to leave their prize amongst their victims. It was not fair that Mercury got to use the very people that they were trying to save against them…but as she had said so herself earlier, sacrifices occasionally had to be made.

She caught Vanir's gaze, and though no words or thoughts were exchanged between the two of them, she knew that he understood what she was asking of him, and he accepted the task with a small nod.

"I will stay behind and give you the time that you need", Vanir declared.

"Wait, are you sure? It would surely mean your death", Lifael asked worried.

"He is, now, torch the wagons and let us get moving before they show up", Loivissa cut in and started carrying out her own order by summoning a flame to eat and devour the wood of the wagon beside them.

Though they had initially planned on stealing the wagons, as fresh supplies were never something that they could say no to, it was still better to torch them than to leave them for Mercury to use. Besides, torching his wagons felt like a small scale retribution for what he had forced them to do.

Soon enough, all of the wagons and their cargos were either engulfed by dancing flames or in the midst of being so, and Loivissa's group, minus Vanir, quickly left the clearing with the heavy iron casket carried between the four of them.

As they traversed through the forest towards their emergency rendezvous point with Ziruvit, Loivissa had a gnawing feeling of guilt churning in her stomach. She knew that Vanir would never have volunteered so easily for this suicide mission if she had not played with and exploited his guilt at Blödhgarm dying during their escape.

Perhaps he would not have sworn himself to her as he had, if she had not done so…but she had, and though she hated to admit it, she had benefitted greatly from this all the way to his death. If she had not done it, then they would have still needed for someone to stay behind, but no one would have been quite as willing as he had been.

In the end though, it did not matter what could have been. Only what would be mattered, and if they were to have any hope of avenging their fallen comrades, then they had to get out of here. Fast.

Not long after, they reached a clearing where they found Ziruvit waiting, but Lifael had filled him in on the way, so he simply grabbed the casket with his right front paw, allowed Lifael, Lord Tahu and Evandar to climb up on his back, as he could only safely carry three people on it, before he grabbed Loivissa in his left front paw and took off with a gust of wind.

From her position, Loivissa had a very good view of the dozen or so armed elves that stormed into the clearing with blood on several of their swords and spears. When the elves saw the dragon, they stopped in shock, and before any of them could pull themselves together, Ziruvit had flown away.

This damn iron casket better be worth the cost that it took to get it, Loivissa angrily thought as they soared through the skies.

So not a complete wipeout like last time, though the prize was not gained without cost either. Also, I might as well say here and now that the elves guarding the convoy did not know about their special cargo.