Jiten Tohktras, General of the Kingdom of Sahbadia, stood facing a wounded man bound in chains. The prisoner was a Feld-Ehian Commander, the only survivor of his battalion.

The man was stripped of his armor and weapons, wearing only a simple pair of pants as he sat in a wooden chair. Ever since his capture the day before, he had been held inside a cell, given little food and water, and constantly showered with questions. But he hadn’t broken under interrogation.

Even when they used less… amicable methods.

The prisoner had bruises all over his body, his left eye was swollen, as was the right side of his jaw. The General knew for a fact some of the prisoner's ribs were fractured. He had been in the room when it happened.

Jiten abhorred torture, but he couldn't afford to not be heavy-handed here. Not after that attack to the city, and not to a Commander from Feld-Ehia. Not if the possibility of more dangers ahead was still present.

With the kind of leader the Feld-Ehian Army had, it was almost inevitable.

“Otto Rembert, what was the objective of your mission here? What is the Kingdom of Feld-Ehia planning?”

The attack on the city had been well-executed, with a spy sabotaging the walls, incense to attract the beasts, forcing the Hunters to fight away from the city, and a battalion of 300 soldiers under magical camouflage to assault the city.

It had been luck and a fortunate encounter that had saved this city. The spy’s artifact had malfunctioned and incapacitated him, the young man named Ethan Bhreg had appeared out of nowhere and used an even more powerful bait to drive the beast horde away from the city.

Even the invading battalion’s invisibility had dispelled when they were still away, and there had been a series of strange coincidences during the battle. If not for those strange lucky accidents, then all of them would be dead now.

And yet, this couldn’t be all. The Sahbadian General knew there was more at play here, and this offensive action couldn’t have been done without thinking of the consequences.

For three years, the monster that commanded the armies of Feld-Ehia had focused her efforts in Formabisia. Right after instigating a civil war in Rillosa and causing a supply mess within Sahbadia, effectively making any intervention either unlikely or delayed. It had taken six months for the Sahbadian Army to be deployed and it had been too late to prevent the fall of the northeastern territories of Formabisia, and even then the Sahbadian troops had been stopped by Feld-Ehian Legions. Later forced to draw back when the assassination of a few nobles and officers had caused logistic chaos and the supply lines compromised, making a longer campaign impossible.

And the Rillosian Civil War had barely ended a few months ago, three Noble Houses had been purged and multiple parts of the land had been burned, now they had inner instability and were focused on restoring order.

Now it seemed that Feld-Ehia was once again setting its gaze on Sahbadia, as this attack proved.

This attack had failed, so whatever plan they had would probably be discarded, but they must have taken some measures under the assumption it would succeed, and prepared countermeasures in the case of failure. Such was the nature of the madwoman that led the Legions; she never attacked with a single knife, and each would have a different kind of poison.

Jiten had tried to contact with the northwestern garrison, but no communication had been achieved, which worried him heavily.

That an armed battalion of 300 mounted soldiers could pass from Feld-Ehia to Sahbadia unimpeded and unnoticed was a liability that needed to be remedied immediately.

And if the frontier troops were compromised, the situation was dire.

The prisoner just laughed.

“You think I’m going to tell you anything, dog of Sahbadia? After you killed my men and burned their remains without a proper burial?”

Otto, the Commander of the invading battalion asked with a bloody smile. Jiten regarded him with a cool gaze.

“You were an invading force, you deserved to be killed to the last. Your soldiers’ remains will be burned later, there’s nothing to do there.”

Jiten replied in an even tone. The bodies couldn’t be left to rot in the desert nor sent back to their country to be buried in their own customs. The only reason they hadn’t been burned in a pyre yet was that there hasn’t been enough time to fill the proper report with drawings of their faces and characteristics. Identification of those soldiers might ultimately be largely irrelevant, but the objective of the procedure was to gather information about enemy troops, there could always be some soldier related to an important figure in the other country, the presence of mages and specialists in different areas could yield information about the state of Feld-Ehian troops too.

Something flickered in the commander’s eyes when Jiten mentioned the soldiers hadn’t been burned yet, but the General couldn’t figure out what it was. The prisoner tilted his head.

“What? You expect me to apologize, then? You won't get anything from me but contempt.”

“I don’t like torture, Commander. But I will let the interrogators play with you if that’s what’s needed to get you to talk. You put in risk the life of a Prince and almost took an outpost to the Desert of Death. This isn’t going to be forgotten nor forgiven.”

Otto’s bloody spit flew through the air in Jiten’s direction but landed on the ground in front of the General.

“I don’t want your forgiveness; I don’t need it. Neither does my country. Though I’m surprised you bastards were here at all, I thought you would be stranded on the way to this city, but we can’t trust Formabisian savages to do a good job, right?”

Jiten frowned. Was he referring to the assassins and the mage that tried to stop them two nights ago? That had been a minor delay at best, they had been from the Tribes of Formabisia.

But if this man was aware of that…

“Intrigued, aren’t you? Now you are wondering how I knew. Good luck getting all paranoid and looking for the leak.”

“You will talk, eventually. We have your spy sedated and he has already given information, you will do the same soon. You will both be taken south and if you have some value you’ll get ransomed back to your Kingdom, after we have extracted all information from your mouth. If not, you will just be executed.”

The prisoner seemed about to make a spiteful reply but a tremor went through him. His face went blank for a moment and then he looked straight at Jiten’s eyes. Cold eyes regarded him and then a savage grin stretched his broken lips.

“The Maprak told you something; and just for that, you think you broke him?”

He laughed, hard and harsh. Like a wounded animal resigned to his fate yet unrepentant of the actions that drove him there. The captured commander moved his head to the sides and his neck made nasty cracking sounds. He leaned back on his chair as he smiled mockingly at Jiten.

“You guys are real idiots. It was never our objective to hold this city, but it doesn’t matter anyway. I already feel it; my mission is over. He will probably go back to the shadows until the next time there’s a use for him.”

Jiten didn’t let the prisoner’s words disturb him, but it was necessary to evaluate them. He had personally checked on the man they called Larin Maprak, the spy and assassin was bound completely and kept under heavy sedatives after his first attempt at escaping. They had also broken his feet to ensure he wouldn’t be running anywhere.

The City Watch had interrogated him before his arrival and had gotten information about the incense sticks that were used to draw in the beasts from the desert and he even gave them their locations.

Had he merely broken under interrogation or had he judged it irrelevant for the mission to give away the location of the incense?

Or maybe there had been a hidden intention there?

General Jiten considered this as he silently watched the prisoner. There had been a change in him, had the mention of the spy altered him? No, there was something else that he was missing.

Otto Rembert spoke again, and his words gave Jiten pause, drawing him away from his thoughts.

“You guys underestimate us too much, that’s why the Strategos will beat you all. Your armies will be toyed with by her, your lands and your Temple will belong to our Kingdom soon.”

The Feld-Ehian commander rejoiced at the change in Jiten’s expression before the General schooled his face into a mask of coldness.

Jiten almost went for his weapon at the mention of the Strategos of Feld-Ehia. The highest military authority in their Kingdom, now in the hands of one of the most talented minds in history and certainly the most terrifying in at least a century. That woman was the epitome of monstrous talent.

“Was it her who planned this?”

“Are you dumb or just being intentionally obtuse? Of course Supreme General Polgár was the one who planned this. Our armies don’t move without her saying so. Who else would craft a plan to attack another country if not her?”

The prisoner grinned as Jiten’s blood ran cold. Jiten knew very well exactly who the commander was talking about.

Alexandra Polgár, one of the most dangerous people alive. She had held the position of Strategos for 13 years now and had turned the armies of Feld-Ehia into the deadliest war machine in the continent through a series of reforms in their organization, the use of unorthodox strategies, and innovative magic both in the battlefield and outside it.

Terrifying talent and peerless insight put into motion to craft unprecedented tactics and strategies spanning the whole continent.

Assassination of officials, interception of messengers, manipulation of messages, infiltration of spy networks, poisoning of wells and supplies, battle lines of mages, massive rituals to twist the environment to Feld-Ehian troops’ advantage, and many more were all tools used by her with cold precision.

Her schemes, plans, and strategies ran deep and wide, with deadly efficiency. And she always played the long game.

She was the one who led the campaigns that humbled the Tribes of Formabisia. She publicly announced how she would crush them and in which order the tribes would be defeated, a whole year before she did it exactly as promised.

That woman had left a bloody trail of broken enemies in her rise to power, and there was no sight of an end any time soon.

Riding from one victory to another since she was 12 years old when she had first led the defense of a small town from raiders, she soon proved to be a prodigious talent in strategy and warfare. Even at her earliest shows of brilliance, she was capable of defeating forces three times the size of her own suffering minimal losses.

At the age of 15, she was already a [General] who rose to prominence in the westernmost part of the continent. Swearing loyalty to the newly crowned [King] of Feld-Ehia, she was entrusted with the position of Strategos and given the task of putting down a rebellion within her country. Her achievements had unified the north of the continent under the authority of the young [King], who had in turn given her free rein to reform the entirety of the armies of the Kingdom of Feld-Ehia to her liking.

And she had used that to achieve even greater glory, transforming the Feld-Ehian Army into a monster capable of striking terror in the rest of the continent.

Currently, at the age of 29, she was the single most feared General in the whole continent, undefeated in battle and always overlooking a dozen different military operations across the continent.

A woman who laughed in the face of Kings and made sport from veteran Generals as if they were toddlers.

Jiten had only met her twice, and both times she had left a lasting impression on him.

He had learned to hate her then.

Even, if he was honest to himself, to fear her.

The first time had been during an international meeting almost ten years ago, where she had strongly criticized the plans the attending members had proposed and she predicted a series of economic and social changes in the coming years. No one in the meeting thought the things she described would happen, yet one by one she had been proved correct. Jiten had admired her talent and keen insight then, even if he disagreed with many of the things she said.

The second time had been on the battlefield two years ago in Formabisia. She had taken five thousand soldiers to face his 20,000 troops. He had lost 9000 men in the single day of their confrontation, when she had twisted the terrain and used it against him, causing a division of his troops and trapping a group of isolated soldiers that would then be slaughtered by her soldiers, while at the same time making it impossible for his remaining troops to pursue her. She had barely lost a few hundred soldiers during that battle.

If the Strategos was personally in command of this operation, then there were at least three other knives they hadn’t seen yet.

And it also meant that the Kingdom of Feld-Ehia was taking this matter seriously, this wasn’t going to be a simple skirmish.

No, this would be the start of a savage war. He would need to tell Prince Amir immediately and send a message to His Majesty.

“I already expected that. Who else but her would order this kind of crazy plans? But is she nearby? Is she supervising this operation personally?”

Jiten gritted his teeth. They needed to prepare, they needed to move-

“I just got this feeling in my bones, you know? It tells me that you are screwed. Maybe she is nearby, maybe she is far away, why would I tell you?”

The captured commander, from his sitting position and bound in chains, seemed to actually be looking disdainfully at Jiten from a high position.

“Perhaps she will be crowned after conquering your country. She isn’t one to fancy a crown, but the Gods know that she wouldn’t be alone if she made a claim for it. It’s not my problem anymore, too bad I’m not gonna be there to see you desert rats drown on your own ashes.”

“If you think she can just take over the continent, you are insane.”

Jiten interrupted in a harsh tone. But Otto barked out a laugh again. There was no fear in him, just spitefulness and grim determination.

“If you think she can’t then you haven’t been paying attention to the world, General.”

“She isn’t invincible.”

“Perhaps, but she has yet to lose a fight, and doesn’t seem to be starting any time soon.”

Noises outside the room made Jiten look away from the prisoner, there was a struggle going on outside.

“Get him! Don’t let them escape, sound the alarm!”

Voices were shouting outside. Jiten rushed to the door when he heard that. There was only one other prisoner in this part of the cells, and he could not be let to regain freedom.

The spy, Larin Maprak, was escaping. Jiten had just opened the door when he heard the mocking voice of Otto Rembert behind him.

“You are all fools, General. Now you’ll pay for that. I am but one of her arrows, just like the Maprak sent here. I do not matter, but he still has a goal to achieve, so he won’t be staying anymore.”

Jiten didn’t have time to waste on the prisoner, but he turned back to look at him when he heard the sound of the chair hitting the floor and the snap of chains breaking.

The commander’s skin was getting red and on his bloodied chest there was a crest shining with sorcery. He smiled as lines extended over his arms and face. There hadn’t been any leaked mana when the spell activated.

‘I just got this feeling in my bones’

That was what the prisoner had said before. A ritual carved into his bones to be activated remotely. Did Larin Maprak activate it? No, he couldn’t be.

Then there was someone else making a move, someone who was rescuing Larin Maprak and had deemed Otto Rembert as expendable.

A pawn to be sacrificed.

The Feld-Ehian Commander ran towards the Sahbadian General as his body was wreathed in red light.

Jiten’s arbir was summoned and he threw it towards Otto, directly to the head since anything other than a killing strike would not stop the ritual, and even that wasn't certain. The commander leaned forwards, running while in a low position. The General’s weapon passed over him and vanished.

[Penta Saeta] was a Skill that enabled the thrown projectile to turn into five copies of itself. Jiten used it now, and the five spears pierced the prisoner in the middle of his sprint.

But he didn’t die immediately nor did he stop moving, the interrogation cell wasn’t big enough for Jiten to had taken any good distance from Otto.

The Feld-Ehian Commander was now right in front of the General.

Even as Jiten dashed backward outside the room, he heard the voice of the dying man.

“Glory to the Kingdom.”

The entire room was blasted away in a flash of red.

“Stay here!”

While Ethan and the young Sword Dancers were standing in alarm, Edek yelled and dashed out of the room. He moved so fast that he was barely more than a blur.

Ethan and Issima’s group hesitated for a moment, but they ran out of the room too, wanting to find out what had happened. When they reached the outside of the City Hall, they managed to glimpse Edek already had covered a huge distance running towards a group of columns of smoke.

People were running on the street. Hunters were rushing to the source of the explosion. There were a few people speculating about the source of the noise, some talked about monsters while others said it was a Mage who attacked. A few observed that the position of the smoke was near the Watch’s barracks.

Ethan was surprised. These people remained calm in the face of an attack, they were organized and moved to attend the situation while various groups moved to different spots of the city to make sure there weren’t other dangers.

The people here were accustomed to danger. They were alert, but there wasn’t panic. They moved with a purpose and responded in a prearranged way.

“Come on!”

Taus spoke with a deep voice as he started to run towards the rising column of smoke. They all dashed forwards, running as fast as they could.

They were all faster than Ethan, even as he ran with all his strength, they still kept ahead of him, although he managed to not fall behind much.

What they found ahead, was a scene Ethan could only compare to a tragedy.

There was rubble all around, buildings were on fire, multiple people laid on the ground. Many were bleeding, while others had burns on different parts of their bodies. There were even people caught under debris.

People were running around helping the survivors, some carried healing potions while others worked together to lift the rubble. There were a few Mages who were casting Spells to tend the wounded. A man in black robes opened a wide scroll of parchment and cold winds and snow came out of it to extinguish the flames.

Many were kneeling by the side of burned people, fumbling with potions to pour on them in hopes of healing the damage and saving lives.

There were shouts, out of Ethan’s sight, calling for reinforcements and gathering Hunters to chase down someone.

People asking hurried questions, only to receive shaking and hesitant answers.

Then Ethan saw Edek, standing next to Kareb as the veteran Hunter sat in a wooden stool while shouting orders at a group of Hunters and they scattered to carry out his commands.

A young man stood attending to Kareb, putting bandages over Kareb’s torso as his hands shone with a soft green light. His left arm was missing, now only a stump covered in bloody bandages remained.

Ethan stared numbly as the sounds washed over him. For the second time in his life, he witnessed the death of multiple people. He stood in shock, taking in the surroundings as cold fear tightened his chest.

“Lad, go help other people. There are others much worse than me, go to them.”

Kareb dismissed the healer with a grunt the moment he was done with the basic healing. Besides his severed arm and a stab below the ribs, he had no other wounds on him. Despite the severity of the loss, he was in no risk of dying while there were people around who were grasping for their last breaths.

The young healer evidently agreed, as he immediately ran off and hurried to tend to others with worse wounds. Mages who knew healing spells were very rare as it apparently required quite a bit of knowledge of anatomy.

Potions were far more popular and accessible, although it was said that mage healing was more efficient unless it was one of the most potent potions, and those were pretty expensive.

Kareb saw a group of youngsters approaching from behind Edek Konal. The Sword Master’s dark eyes were scanning the area restlessly, one of his hands on the grip of his unadorned sword. Though the Hunter knew enough to not look down on that seemingly ordinary sword, much less on its wielder. Anyone fool enough to underestimate an Elder from the Assembly of Thaliss was an utter idiot who would end up sliced in pieces.

The young Sword Dancers approached them, walking behind them Ethan Bhreg followed with a pale face, all the while looking at the destruction around. He was more visibly shaken by it than the rest of them.

Edek turned around and frowned at the group of youngsters. His voice was severe as he reprimanded them.

“Did I not tell you to stay there? What are you doing here?”

“We want to help, Elder.”

Taus, the tall and dark-skinned youth among the group replied without missing a beat. The others nodded in agreement and with eyes full of determination. But their enthusiasm didn’t impress their Elder, who shook his head decisively.

“There’s nothing for you guys to help, go back and let more experienced people handle this.”

Edek dismissed them immediately. None of them were healers and they didn’t have enough strength to do much here. There were already workers and healers helping the wounded. These youngsters would only put themselves in danger here.

“Get the kids out of here, Edek. Go with them, for their safety. There might be other enemies lurking around. The Mapraks got away, but they aren’t the only dangerous individuals in the service of Feld-Ehia.”

Kareb stood up and grimaced. Two skilled assassins had come to get the one they had captured. They had bypassed the guardsmen on duty of watching the prisoners and even killed a few before being noticed. He strongly suspected they were both members of the Maprak Clan, they sure had the skill to match.

Kareb had come across those bastards as they fled, one of them with the prisoner on his back. It had been a short fight; Kareb and one of them had barely traded a few blows when those big explosions happened.

The distraction had cost him; a single moment was all the expert killer had needed to maim him.

The bastards had gotten away carrying their wounded kinsman. Even parts of the Watch’s barracks were blown off by the large explosions, to which there was still no clear explanation besides some babbling about dead men and flashes of red by a few witnesses.

Kareb walked forwards but stumbled; potions hadn’t gotten rid of all the poison from the wound that the Maprak’s dagger had caused to his side. Mostly sedative and paralysis, which had been lucky, both because he could be dead now if it had been something lethal and because it helped him deal with the pain of the severed arm.

He tried not to let the thought linger, this was not a moment for lamentations; it wasn’t his sword arm, he would manage. There were immediate concerns to attend.

“You think there are more spies.”

Edek said and it wasn’t a question. Kareb nodded with a snarl.

“Absolutely. So many explosions aren’t the work of two people, and the bastards need an escape route. They aren’t alone in this.”

Kareb had just sent runners to the city gates to get them closed, but he doubted that would be enough to capture experienced spies. They needed to move and organize a manhunt immediately. Enemies were hiding somewhere in the city, and needed to be found now.

“Elder, we can help! If you need people to deliver messages or carry the wounded…”

“We can also help with the debris, to get those trapped underneath-”

“Enough. There are already people here for those tasks.”

Edek started to discuss with the youngsters, Kareb left them to it. It was for the best if he took them away, they would be safer that way, there wasn’t much they could do here anyway.

Kareb walked towards a group of people, they had gathered the wounded survivors; members of the Watch, Hunters, and some civilians. They had varying degrees of burns, lacerations and bone fractures. Some had lost limbs, like him.

They would be transported to another building for treatment and to give them a safe place to rest.

Kareb heard Ethan raising his voice, yelling at someone about helping. So he was probably taking the other youngsters’ side on wanting to help.

Well, he certainly had made it clear he is the type that wants to help those in need.

Unfortunately, there was nothing for those kids to do here, unless they suddenly gained the ability to heal grave wounds. Kareb decided to ignore the discussion behind him.

The veteran Hunter’s eyes moved to the smoking building that was used to keep prisoners and interrogations. The Prince and a few of his guards had entered it, they had also helped extinguish flames and remove rubble, going ever deeper into the building.

Now they were coming out.

“Healer! We need a healer!”

The prince yelled as soon as he was out of the building.

Two of his guards were carrying the General in a pane of conjured blue light. The sight was hideous, the General’s left arm and leg were gone, exposing shattered bones and seared flesh. It was likely he had been the victim of a direct explosion. Half of his face was horribly ruined by the fire, despite evidently having been poured a potion by the Prince, the rest of his body was covered in ashes and his clothes were torn apart.

It might be a grim thought, but Kareb didn’t have much hope for the man. The General was strong, but being right in front of such a blast would do more than burn flesh; it would shatter bone and burst internal organs.

There were wounds that were simply too severe, that even the best healing potions and magic healers could not mend. He clutched at the stump that used to be his left arm, one type of wound that nothing except the highest sorceries could amend.

Healers came forward at the Prince’s call, but they could not save a man’s life when it was already half-way into the grave. Kareb saw the healers surround the wounded General, hands shining with soft light; they poured potions and covering wounds with bandages. It was all for naught.

Kareb heard them tell the Prince that they could only delay the inevitable, he watched the second son of the Monarch lose his temper and curse loudly. It might be unbecoming of royalty, but it showed that he cared.

There was more shouting behind the veteran Hunter, the voice of a young man speaking in a strange tongue that was nevertheless perfectly understood by everyone who heard him. Kareb turned around.

A foreign young man strode forward; he was shaking and pale-faced, but his gaze was unwavering and his steps were purposeful.

Kareb saw the young man walk towards the group of wounded.

And witnessed a miracle.