…with the usage of miracles associated with the new turbine and water steam channel system, a new kind of energy has been produced, as referenced in the Imperial writings. Through the resistance device, and with permanents shifts of God-Touched, the practical use of this energy is made possible. The authors advocate that the wisdom of the Imperatrix will lead to:

A public lighting and warm water system in the capital, within five years, and within ten to twenty years for the other kingdom’s cities (see more p.247) The construction of fast and automatic caravan roads, named rail network, between the different cities, within ten years (see more p.251) Military applications (see more p.372)

The authors estimate the public lighting system to improve general productivity by 7%, the rail network to improve general economy by…

Miracle of electricity, University of Sage-Brothers of Leïn, Year 122 after the war of the Firantes.

Quar Birrebus was a predictable swordsman. He used three techniques, always the same, and only varied his speed, rhythm, and the order of his sequencing. His sword was always pointed towards his opponent, his guard unbreakable.

He followed the Commandare’s philosophy. There was no need for complex techniques, or spectacular feints, when you had mastered the basics to perfection.

For Nay, this was probably the worst kind of opponent. The advantage given to her by the Rreico was almost rendered null, and in terms of experience, she was far behind him. She could only beat him in flexibility, and maybe in speed. On all other points, he was superior. Worse even, she had the handicap of still carrying her bag on her back, that she would definitely not be given the opportunity to remove.

He took one step towards her, all of his focus on Nay.

His first strike was a simple vertical one. She parried it with her dagger and sword. It was far too strong for her to counter it with one hand. Immediately after, a second strike came flying towards her. A horizontal slash this time. Less powerful, but impossible to block, she stepped back to dodge. He did not stop there and continued his assault with a thrusting strike. He was not going to give her room to breathe. She pushed the attack away with a flick of the wrist of her dagger, and counter-attacked with her own thrust of a sword, that she disguised as a diagonal slash, but he had already backed away.

Nay swore internally. She had no Rreico to capture, no rhythm here she could take advantage of. This duel would be long and exhausting. At the first misstep, it would end.

And Quar Birrebus was not one to misstep.

The young Legio and the decorated guard moved forwards, backwards. Nay tried to find an opening, tried every technique taught to her by Marke, alternated rhythms, used her feet to kick sand and rocks in his face, she tried to switch hands, using the dagger in her right and the sword in her left, but even that failed.

The second in command parried, dodged, thrust, and slashed, horizontally and vertically. Nothing else. Nonetheless, his speed, his strength… if there was a door to reach him, it was firmly sealed shut.

The young Legio was getting tired. Usually, this was when their usual duels would end. She made a mistake, her grip became too sloppy, her guard not high enough… Nay had never fought against Quar Birrebus seriously, as their previous duels had always been friendly, so he should not have been used to the variety of techniques she usually reserved for her father, or her usage of the dagger and sword combo. Virnyl guard apprentices only used the sword and either a shield or metallic gloves, after all. They studied most of the other weapons, but their duels were ones of swordsmanship.

But Quar was undisturbed. His Rreico was perfectly tranquil.

Nay breathed loudly, and even if her opponent had sweat falling from his forehead, she knew it would still be a long time before he reached his limits.

Endurance she could not match.

“Give up.” He repeated

Nay breathed through the nose. Exhaled through the mouth. The guards surrounding them were getting antsy, despite de Commandare’s right hand’s orders. She had felt their desire to intervene multiple times during the fight. Attack her from behind, get her while she dodged… Nay could use this, but she would not take this chance it until there was no other choice. She wanted to avoid this at all costs.

So, she started to dance.

Quar Birrebus stopped moving. His guard up, his eyes riveted on her.

Nay turned one last time, her dagger slipping away from her fingers.

She instantly took the remaining dagger on her back, and threw it as well.

The Commandare’s right hand parried the first blade going straight for his eyes with the back of his metallic glove. The second dagger he struck with the flat side of his sword. He had done this in pure reflex, having blinded himself to the second dagger with his defensive posture.

When he looked towards the young Legio again, she was gone.

A shadow of a smile appeared on his lips, as his eyes fell to Nay, just under him.

She used a Trechuite technique, her sword swiping the ground to fly like a whip towards the man’s neck.

Not hesitating for a second, he simply stepped forwards, and the attack bounced on the plating of his shoulder.

For the first time in the duel, he used a kick to counterattack her. Her failed assault had left her open, and she had no choice but to block it with her left arm. The young Legio heard the characteristic sound of bone breaking. Her training took control of her body. It let her jump backwards despite the eye-turning pain, dodging the sword plummeting down where she had just stood.

They stared at each other. His cheek was bleeding, her first dagger had to have ricocheted from his gauntlet.

“Not bad, but you over…” He started.

Nay grimaced. Not out of pain, but because of what she was going to have to do.

He understood as well, as his eyes looked behind her, but too late.

Some of the guards, witnessing Nay’s broken arm, had decided they had finally a good enough opportunity to take action.

“NO! DO NOT…” Quar Birebbus shouted as he tried to cross the distance between him and Nay.

A guard, probably thinking of catching Nay by surprise by attacking her from behind, swung a club towards the top of her head.

The young Legio crouched, and in the same movement, jumped backwards.

The attack as well as the guard passed in front of her without touching her. He now stood on a deadly spot between Nay and Quar Birrebus. The latter did not stop his run towards them, even when the young Legio showed her intent to make the guard hostage by putting her sword next to the neck.

“Wha!?” Said the stunned guard in a high-pitched voice, revealing that it was in fact a woman.

“Sorry soldier.” Quar announced. His sword flew from left to right, ready to cut both the guard and Nay simultaneously. There had been no hesitation in his decision.

And Nay had never had any doubts about it. Still, the swordsman’s Rreico had stumbled, he had been surprised, the time of one blink of the eye.

For the Legio, this was enough. She too, showed no hesitation, and no remorse. Despite the horror of her act, despite her desire to find something, anything else, her actions were driven by survival. With a kick in the back of the knee, she forced the female guard to turn her body around to take Quar Birrebus’s slash wholly. He wasn’t ready for such ruthlessness coming from her. He had no way of stopping his momentum, his sword cutting through the leather armour and going deep inside the torso of the young Legio’s human shield.

Blood spurted, drenching the ground, and the woman let out an agonising scream.

Quar’s sword was stuck inside the woman.

“Maggie!” Yelped another guard in a traumatized voice.

Nay ran, not stopping to look, going straight for the opening in the circle made by the absence of the guard named Maggie.

The others that surrounded her reacted slowly, only two, closest and reactive enough, managed to stand between Nay and freedom.

She ran faster, not worried at all. Even with her broken left arm, they had not a chance to stop her. They attacked simultaneously, to their credit, but one simple Imperatrix’s dance step, and she had dodged their attack and penetrated their guard. She hit the one on her right with the flat part of her sword, straight to the temple. The guard stumbled into his neighbour, pushing him away and opening the path to Nay’s escape.

When Quar Birrebus managed to retrieve his sword and remove the body over him, Nay was already far gone.

“What are you doing!? Go after her!” He commanded. All obeyed him, except one.

“You killed her. You killed Maggie!”

Quar Birrebus shrugged his shoulders.

“She was dead the moment she decided to forgo my orders.” He responded coldly with not even a glance towards the man at his feet.

“She’s over there!”

Nay went further into the alleyway. She had managed to reach the closest village, still pursued by the guards. She had no other spots to get rid of her pursuers, as there was only towns and immense wheat fields around. Fortunately, so close to Leïn, villages were plenty, and so she had plenty opportunities to use the houses and streets to escape. The only problem was that she had no knowledge of her surroundings, while her assailants had probably been born here.

Her left arm was in agony, and every step she took was making the pain expand until it reached her neck, as if her skin was burnt by a glowing fire poker.

What hurt the most wasn’t that though, it was the guilt eating her innards.

Nay could not stop to regret her actions. She had to live. She had to go to her mother and sister.

The alleys were cute, paved, and surrounded by stone houses Nay would have felt appropriate seeing on the rising roads of the Ducal plateau. They were covered in growing plants and flowers, their rooves in beautiful red tiles.

She had no time to enjoy the architecture, she felt a guard on the verge of appearing out of the next street corner. She took a sharp turn into a small earthy road between two houses, obscured by the shadows of the two rooves.

“There!”

Nay stopped. This was a dead-end, in front of her, a courtyard was ending in a tall stone wall and multiple large clay ovens used to bake bread. A young baker, oblivious to Nay’s presence, was currently swiping clean the furnaces of their soot.

Nay examined the wall.

This was her way out. The interstices between the slabs were thick and regular. The climb would have been easy even if both of her arms were broken.

The guards arrived less than one minute after. The young baker was still cleaning her ovens, finally raising her head as she heard the multiple footsteps of the guards penetrating her property. She stared at them, clearly surprised, a bit worried, but they were looking much more puzzled than she was, wondering how a wounded young woman had managed the feat of vanishing into thin air.

“Biach.” Nay swore as she removed her leather armour. She lacked the courage to do the same thing to her underclothes. She decided to get rid of her left sleeve completely with one of the extra daggers in her backpack. She took a look at her arm. A bluish bruise was turning violet, and growing from her lower shoulder to her upper elbow. She teared up when she started palpating the broken bone.

“Hnggg.” She groaned the most silently possible. She was hidden on a roof; people could still hear her.

Her check-up complete, Nay felt like she could breathe again, as tears were flowing on her cheeks.

The bone was definitely broken, but cleanly so. If she could find something to put it back in place and fix it there, she only needed rest and there should have been no complications.

She was getting dizzy, as the adrenalin pulsing through her veins was dissipating. Her body was on verge of collapse.

She closed her eyes.

The night was falling when a loud, screeching noise woke her up.

She groaned in plain standing up. The roof tiles were a slippery death trap, and she cautiously reached the top of the slanted roof.

At eighty yards or so, in the middle of the village square, stood a weird caravan. It was felt too lang and rectangular to be a regular convoy.

Nay was feeling a weird Rreico coming from it.

“Magic?” She asked out loud.

No, she corrected herself internally. It did not feel anything like that.

She could not stay here.

She remembered the scream of despair and agony.

Had this been necessary? Had she really had no other choice?

No excuse satisfied her. She had failed, plain and simple. She lost against Quar Birrebus, again, and had to use a last resort of the most atrocious kind, one the Firantes themselves would have loved.

Still, the Legio wasn’t a child anymore. She was not going to mope in her mistakes, she would get back up. Learn more, grow more, so she’d never have to make such a decision ever again.

In the meantime, guilt and regret were stabbing her heart.

Maggie.

She would remember that name.

Carefully, she decided to look what all the fuss was about this weird Rreico and caravan.

No one cared about her. She hid her presence from the patrolling guards easily, and the villagers seemed too busy with their usual chores.

The young Legio had no idea what it was she was currently looking at. Some sort of construction site, without a doubt, but constructing what? Twenty or so workers were hammering the ground, breaking it down and filling it up with gravel. On top of it they laid down and screwed enormous metal beams. The heavy material was craned down from the caravans, that under closer scrutiny, were more like large boxes with wheels. No Yae were there to pull the carriage.

This weird caravan line was stuck to the metallic road the workers were continuing. This road was what Nay felt with her Legio perception. There was something akin to magic on the metal already fixed on the ground, and it felt like it was going east, towards Leïn.

Nay felt someone noticing her. As the Rreico only showed envy to share, she acted as if she was not aware by the old man coming behind her.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” He said with no introduction.

“I don’t know about that, I don’t even know what it is?”

“Ha ha! As I thought, you’re not from around here, are you? This is the Sage-Brother’s new discovery. They call it a railway network, pretty complicated words, we around here prefer to call it the Iron road. A true miracle, that is. Ten times faster than a normal caravan! Without using any Yae!”

Despite any deception in his Rreico, Nay was having a hard time to believe him.

“Ten times? You’re exaggerating.”

“None of that! Stay here, you’ll see. Every three, four hours, the train, that’s how we call the large caravan, leaves for Leïn to stock up in stones and metal beams. It takes them less than one hour to get there!”

“Less than an hour!?” Nay wasn’t forcing her act as a country bumpkin visiting the city for the first time, she was genuinely impressed.

“I promise to Hyn!”

Nay thought about it for a moment, then her hand went to her purse. The movement echoed to her left arm, but she managed to hide her pained expression.

“Here, to thank you for your explanation.”

“No, no. I take much pleasure in sharing this news. We need it, you know, with the current times. You heard about what happened in Gite, I suppose.”

This time, Nay tensed up visibly. It did not go unnoticed.

“…You’re young under this hood, aren’t you dear? Would you make an lonely old man happy and share a cup of tea with me?”

Nay felt tears peak under her eyes, not because of pain, but because of the Rreico of pure benevolence emanating from the old man.

She turned around to face him.

He wasn’t tall. He had all his teeth, but they were quite yellow. He had only a few white hair left on top of his head, and his clothes were of good quality, despite being simple. Actually, Nay realised, he may have been tall in the past, but was now bending down too much to say for certain.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea. I’m someone who brings moat cats with her.”

“I’m just an old man, all by my lonesome and my family lives beyond the Hymerian jungle. I don’t believe a lovely thing like you to be a bad omen, but even if you were, it wouldn’t matter for one such as I.”

He gestured to follow him, and started to walk away from the village square.

Nay looked at the construction site and the train. One hour to reach Leïn? She knew what her plan was.

She sighed. She probably shouldn’t. It was risky, would not give her the most chances of survival.

Nay remembered Sage Jormun’s words. She saw him inside the silhouette of the old man with the curved back.

“Live until the stars fade.”

She had no idea why those words had come back to her now.

She sighed.

She held her broken arm, grimaced in pain, then followed the old man.