The wall disintegrated under the pressure of the bolt. Red dust and evaporated brick clung to Lisŗa’s nostrils. The commotion had attracted the other Scoutrunners to the neighborhood just outside the palace. The insurgents without those hellish weapons had long fled. Lisŗa didn’t know why, but she had no time to question it. Only the gunners remained, and they were surrounded in the center of the road, locked in a stalemate. No one could make a move. She peeked around the corner of her alleyway. Two of her allies—Lismé and Yeoman—hid behind the chimney of a house on the opposite side of the street. Several others were here as well, hiding in the alleyways and rooftops, constantly fidgeting, hesitating. One shot was enough. The weapons had the power to tear holes in walls.

Deep inside she knew if they all charged the two gunners at once, they’d subdue them in moments. But not before at least two of her allies were reduced to a fine mist. They couldn’t leave while the gunners were at large, but they had no means of stopping them.

Lisŗa’s passenger paper buzzed. She retrieved it.

“I have an idea,” Yeoman wrote. “We distract them. Run from roof to roof using them as cover. A group of us stay on the ground and attack when we have their back.”

“That’s insane,” A runner named Haden wrote. “They could turn around in a second when they hear one of us start running up to them.”

Lisŗa sighed. Yeoman was annoyingly shrewd.

“Let’s do it,” she wrote.

In the absence of authority, the runners did not assert much resistance to the plans of their peers. Lisŗa’s skin bristled at the sensation of their reluctance however. That noble pride that all of them carried would take more than a year of humility in the training camp to get rid of. Roughly half of them leapt from wall to the wall and took to the roofs. Lisŗa briefly reminisced as she watched them go. That was the test that determined where she belonged. She had never felt farther from belonging since.

Red flashes brought her attention back to that damp alleyway. Loud bangs and the sound of tearing structure reverberated in her ears. A runner cried out at what must have been a very close shot. She peered around the corner and saw the gunners shouting at each other, aiming their weapons at the roofs above her position. Bits of brick and shingles fell in wet trails by her feet. But there, on the opposite side of the road hidden in the shadow between houses, she saw a few teammates who had the gunners’ backs in that moment. They didn’t move. The road was wide enough for several carriages side by side; there was too much distance to cover and none of them were fast enough. So why did they agree to this plan?

The gunners were shooting at the other roofs now. Lisŗa sprinted out of her alleyway and onto their position in less than a second. She grabbed both of their necks and pulled them onto the ground. Moments later the other runners came to rip the guns away from their grips. Lisŗa then lifted them by their throats a few inches off the pavestones and slammed them down. The gunners limbs’ relaxed.

“Well done!” Yeoman exclaimed. He rappelled back down on the ground. There were noticeable tears in his uniform and one burn streak across his shoulder. “You don’t even need to be accurate with those things. What monstrous designs. Got nicked a little.”

The runners took to the moment of levity without hesitation. Then one by one, the doors to the houses opened, and the citizens came out to cheer and thank them. They had been lucky to be one of the few pockets in the district to be spared from the fires, now they were spared further by a group of young men and women who shouldn’t even have been there.

“What’s the matter?” Yeoman asked. “That was amazing! You’re incredible at this!”

“I want to see your passenger paper,” Lisŗa said.

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

He raised his hands. “Whoa whoa, I didn’t know we were at that part of the relationship yet but you have to trust me. I wasn’t writing to other—”

Lisŗa placed a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers closed like a vice, holding him in place. She took the booklet out of his inner pocket and flipped through the pages. She exhaled knowingly.

“When you said a group of us should stay on the ground, you really meant just me,” she said.

Yeoman shrugged. “You were the only one who could have done it.”

“So why not come out with it honestly instead of writing the real plan to our teammates behind my back?”

“There was a chance you might disagree,” Yeoman said. He lowered his hands. His face became stern. “The plan might have worked. I made ‘might’ into a certainty. And none of us died.”

“You—”

“Look. We just saved their property.” Yeoman nodded at the jovial citizens stepping out of their homes as though they had been stuck inside for years. “Isn’t this why soldiers exist?”

“We’re transport escorts, we shouldn’t even be here.”

“But we are. And this is an emergency. And when we find Yavi, he’ll make note of our efforts. We might find ourselves in the real thing sooner than expected.”

“What real thing?!”

Yeoman brushed Lisŗa’s hand off his shoulder.

“The real military, where the real money and power is. This? This is daycare for nobles. Well, me included, but I’m self-aware of it. Bandits and highwaymen without a warlord are sickly, weak fodder shitting and eating berries in the woods. Any of us can take them on. The test isn’t over. Yavi is looking for people to let in to the Emperor’s Rocs.”

“You mean the sickly fodder that killed several of us and overwhelmed our caravan?”

“You’re not this dumb, Lisŗa, don’t pretend to be,” Yeoman said. “Those were soldiers. Aldrenites, I reckon. Those for whom the war hadn’t ended.”

Lisŗa shook her head, turning away.

“This isn’t right,” she said.

“I did what I had to,” Yeoman continued, “You can’t let opportunities go. It’s just not good business. I had your career in mind too.”

It was time they moved onward to the palace. Lisŗa followed the group, but it was her limbs that did the moving. Her mind wandered.

--

Jorge swung from the left while Edeard thrust from the right. Pure strength behind the heavy, black stone cut a swath through the air beside the streak of a repulsion Spell. The leader sidestepped the former and parried the other. A flash of force threw both of them back.

“His sword is Enchanted,” Edeard said in English. “That’s the only reason it would be able to parry Spells.”

“Good thing I’m not into magic,” Jorge said.

“I’m beginning to feel left out,” the leader said. “What language is that?”

“He’s stalling,” Jorge said. “They want the girl desperately.”

They attacked again, harder, faster. Jorge channeled even more power into his swings. They began to wobble in transit towards the enemy. Edeard tried other Spells. His arcanery was limited, however. Their attacks were not putting up enough pressure. But neither could their opponent return any attacks. The leader’s guard was just good enough for the both of them.

“This isn’t working,” Jorge said. “New plan. I’m going to taunt.”

“What?” Edeard exclaimed.

“Get after the boat after you see an opening.”

Then Jorge roared. The leader flinched. Edeard nearly dropped his weapon. Jorge lunged in that instant of an opening with his axe close to his chest. The leader was forced to block. The two engaged in a contest of pure strength. Meanwhile, Edeard sprinted around and rushed downriver.

“No!” The leader threw Jorge off, sending him into the river. But Edeard was already closing in on the boat.

--

They didn’t take her seriously. That much was obvious even without June’s senses. They joked in Aldren dialect and talked of nothing. Beneath the genial attitude however was something unmistakable. The anger of a loyal soldier lost. Patriotism without a vector. June had read the newly minted history books about how the defeat was ceremonious. Many Aldrenites simply integrated. They surrendered their arms and accepted change. Each page talked of a peaceful, appropriate end to a bloody war, freshly printed off of Falerian presses. She had never thought much of it. Having just learned to trust human beings again after Vulka’s rescue, she hadn’t been in the headspace to question it. She understood now war continued even after no armies remained.

Her own anger bubbled near the surface of her control, held back by the light of that mysterious lantern at the belt of one of the soldiers. There were several men between her and it. They only saw its pale blue light. She felt its restricting presence. What was it? How did they procure something so specifically against her curse?

“I’m not sure what you people expect out of me,” she said.

No response. They had no reason to talk to her.

“Do you even understand me?”

A man with a scar down his face, blind in one eye, shot her a mean glance. The kind one used to quiet children.

“You think you’re all doing some noble labor. But all you’re doing is hurting innocents! These people don’t know your war!”

The chatter began to grow annoyed. June kept talking, drawing their focus away from their surroundings. Without her staff her Light was limited, but she had been collecting it since they took her onboard. And she had just heard footsteps rapidly approaching along the canal. One of the men stood from his seat, face twisted by impatience.

“Listen, girl, none of us need your lecturing. Stay put and—”

The air whistled with repulsion Spells. Two men fell into the water. The others quickly got back on their feet, weapons ready. Edeard ran around the boat, timing repulsion Spells with his footfalls on the water surface. It was difficult keeping himself on the surface of the water while attacking. A few of the soldiers pulled bowstrings back. When they began to fire, he had to devote attention to deflecting the arrows as well. He was kept at a distance.

June suddenly sprang to her feet and barreled into the men with all the Light she had mustered, straight toward the lantern bearer. The push was enough to tip his balance. He fell into the river swinging his arms. The others quickly descended upon her, bending her arms back and pinning her to the floor of the boat.

“Hold on!” Edeard shouted. Arrow tips clinked off his sword. Some of them were getting dangerously close to him.

June screamed. Her arms were being restrained in angles they weren’t supposed to be in. She felt rough rope encircle her ankles.

“You’ve just wasted our generosity, poppet,” one of the men said with a snarl.

“No,” June managed to sputter with her cheeks against the wet wood. Somewhere beneath the surface of the water, she felt the pressure of the pale light go out. The Light within her disappeared like a solitary candle in the dead of winter. “None of you deserve to live.”

Edeard had finally reached his limit. He missed one repulsion Spell too many and fell into the river. The circling cloud in the sky cast warbling, pale light through the surface of the water as his armor pulled him deeper. He began to swim back up, moving closer to the light. Then he blinked. All sense of direction left him. The waters became pitch black and the sky disappeared. He forgot which way was up. His lungs were beginning to burn and muffled screaming echoed in his ears.