The first thing Salaya wishes for is to not have to fight. The second is for sunshine. Rain pelts over the convoy, dripping relentlessly through the so-called 'waterproof' canvas. “We're almost there.” says Ebin. He seems cheerful. She can hear it now. The screams, the roars, the clash of metal. Her fingers drum nervously on her knees. Broga next to her has his hand on his pommel. He keeps drawing the sword just so the gleam of the blade is visible, then sheathing it. He gives her a reassuring smile which she returns. Surrounded by friendly faces, there's a part of Salaya that never wants this moment to end. Steel, spark, faith. They bow their heads in silent prayer.

“How big are they?”

Ebin chuckles. “This is routine. We'll be finished and on our way again before the adrenaline's worn off.” He peers outside. “Here we go!” Buckles unclasp and ropes whip apart. The canvas is hurled from the top of the carriage and Ebin leaps out first. Salaya doesn't hesitate in following.

The plains give way to hills giving way to columns giving way to mountains. If it's a metaphor for something, Octave hasn't decided what. She takes a breath then bursts into a sprint. She rushes toward the edge, feet rising, feet falling, her stride lengthening over loose pebbles and solid stone. The ground races beneath her and drops out as the ledge narrows and disappears. She is on her own now. Her trailing foot pushes off the ledge and she flings herself as far out from safety as she can. It's fitting that the world comes to this. All she can see below is tan and brown, nondescript with tiny green dots for the withered trees. Scrabbling desperately for a foothold in dirt that has repelled more fearsome invaders yet. The blue writhes beneath in a narrow valley no human could scale: igneous, foam, steelhead. For an integral second, she is weightless. As time approaches the full second, her body gives out against gravity. Wind sings in her ears, the tune an eerie rendition of the hymns they used to chant under ancient arches and classy curtains. Who will come when you sit alone under the shade of a dying sun/the city weeps for an epoch displaced/lost under the light of a world undone. Tears brim Octave's eyes.

If the orcs are surprised at the figures leaping from the convoy, they don't show it. Are orcs capable of surprise, or are their minds too singular? The vim rises in Salaya's chest until it bursts out. She catches two outstretched handfuls and channels them. As orcish archers in black launch shafts at the convoy, she can feel them turn away until their momentum sends them tumbling to the ground harmlessly. But that isn't her job. Annya to her left and Crish to her right can feel it too, feel the arrows cutting through the air, feel their trajectories shift. Now it's up to her. “Quick formation!” calls Ebin.

Swords clash and shields clang. Trampled paths lead from the edge of the woods through fields of barley and cabbages from which villagers are screaming and running in the face of chainmailed orc raiders. They run toward the shelter of their huts and behind the swords and shields of the convoy. The other convoys arrive, more fighters, more swords. A heavy scent pervades the field like nothing Salaya has ever experienced. Broga locks blades with a heavyset raider. They both slip in the muddy ground and an opening appears in the formation.

Octave can savour the impending descent. It feeds into her joints; the fear of shattering impact. She always was afraid of heights. Pop the wings. Her shoulders twist and her very skeleton expands as the wings appear in an eruption of sinew and skin. The peripheral mountains steady: the snowcaps aren't becoming more distant. Now she is moving again, but this time guided by chiropteraform fingers stretching leather membranes against updrafts warm with relief. She soars, wings taught with her weight, until the snow is level. Beyond the mountains, the neverending plains of tan grass run the horizon.

Octave wipes her eyes and tucks in her legs, they've never felt so useless, and twists again to redirect higher. Higher, higher, higher. It's never high enough. When she is finally looking down on mountain peaks, the updraft gives out and she is again weightless for that infinite second.

The force of the orc's blow nearly knocks Salaya's sword out of her hand. His roar alone is staggering, but the shove from his shield sends her rolling over the wet grass. He must have hit her too hard, for as he hefts his sword for a finishing blow, he realises she's been knocked out of his range. Salaya scrambles to her feet before he can close the gap. The anger screams in her ears, drowning out the screams of battle and sending out small puffs of steam where raindrops once fell. A single eye blinks at her over a slack jaw full of twigs for teeth. The orc's face is ugly with scars criss-crossing his midnight green face. The heat of the fire melts the scars together until his face is nothing more than a single gash of searing flesh and pain. The black hole where his mouth was is open wide enough for a entire haunch, but she can't hear anything over the beat of the pulse in her temples. Another orc rushes through the gap Broga is unable to fill, then another. The flames collapse on them too. Her feet remember their training and they keep moving.

In the second before the fall, Octave is free. The noonday sun beams onto her back, casting a shadow of her wings onto the ground below so faint no eagle could spot it. Speaking of eagles, there's one now. It's circling around, putting distance between it and her, annoyed at this interloper. Surely this is too high up for hunting. It screeches, nails prised out of a board. The single cloud threatens to obscure the sun, but it wouldn't dare. Not yet. For this moment, Octave drifts in a sea of her own complacent solitude, each wave washing up on a shore brilliant with silicon thoughts and imaginings.

Salaya circles until she has just enough distance. Red hell bursts from her fingertips. It crackles into the trio of orcs until all three are a lifeless heap on the steaming grass. She shifts, one foot turning and leading the other. The rift in reality she conjures glows with incandescent light. Blue blazes through the gap in the struggling fighters underneath violet streaks send orcs reeling and tumbling. The red and yellow rush back, embracing Salaya until she glows with a power even Annya can't match. Orcish archers in the back unleash at this new threat, and Salaya matches their shots with explosive shots of her own. The heat builds in her hands, running up her arms. Another orc, and another. Annya catches them expertly in a net of light and Salaya finishes each one with a blow that leaves a trail of shimmering air in its wake.

As the second gives out, Octave falls again. Her wings clap together behind her back to decrease drag. She descends nose to the ground, soles facing the azure above. It's never high enough. Her body reenters the updraft, slicing through the warm wind. The land below grows larger at an alarming rate.

Salaya's feet move. Another orc rushes her, and she swats at him like the filthy insect he is. But something is off. The blow deflects off him and whistles harmlessly through the air. Too late she sees the protective charm of brown teeth and yellow claws around his neck. That's a shaman. Then he swings his staff at her, knocking the sword from her hand. Too late she realises that every time she's moved, it's been to put distance between her and the rest of the convoy. She's alone.

Salaya circles again, her feet trying to move her back toward the safety of Annya, but the shaman won't allow it. He pushes her back further away, red eyes narrowing, crooked mouth leering. His hair is dark and longer than her's, even when she was a little girl. When he rushes forward, she leaps back in alarm to fumble out a barrier, but it's a feint and he laughs at her reaction. The anger is again burning in her ears and she coalesces it into flames that surround and engulf the shaman. Harmless. He shrugs his massive shoulders as if to clear them away. He throws a kick at her legs as they move and catches them off balance. Salaya stumbles but stays upright. As she gathers herself together for another attack, his panther-headed staff slams into her midsection. The wind escapes her lips in a gasp.

Octave inhales and the wind rips through her mouth and down her windpipe. Ears whistling, eyes wincing, breasts compressed against ribcage, hair streaming out over bat-like wings. Down between the mountains where the rock columns rise up below her, old wizened figures battered by millennia of exposure to the elements. She adjusts herself slightly and hurtles toward the nearest of them, whooping in the exultation of speed. The sound of her celebration blows past her ears and reverberates against the rocks before drifting up and away. She can't accelerate more by natural means, but pushes, the force of her mind whipping her to velocities beyond any gravity-bound reckonings.

The first rocky formation impasses in her way. This one is old, a man definitely, head in bowed in prayer. Octave cocks her own head as she blows past him, winking at his sullen rock torso a thousand paces above disaster on the earth's surface. The next two stand side-by-side. An old married couple, stooped with age, hair hanging in viny tendrils. The gap between them is narrow. Octave folds her wings in as tightly as she can, but it's not enough. She can't fit..

Salaya trips over something big and falls. She looks down and realises what the heavy scent is; her legs slide through a dark red pool that sticks to her boots as if trying to pull them back down into coagulating blood. She kicks the corpse of a village boy, perhaps a year or two younger than her, away. His head flops on a broken neck. The shaman advances grinning. He paws at his belt and comes up with a jagged knife the length of Salaya's forearm. He steps over the corpse. Almost leisurely. He lunges as Salaya tries to stand. In an instant the screams, the cries, clash of metal against metal, the blasts of magical energy overwhelm her. The force, the anger in her head fades away. All she can see is the thick orcish arm and knife whizzing toward her face.

No time to adjust at this velocity. The wings dissolve from Octave's back leaving only smoke skeletons behind which shatter against the rocks as she turns sideways to fit through the gap. The old fools. She's between the columns, then past in a sliver of a second, her hair flailing off the rocks and nearly upsetting her balance. Her eyes widen. Another rock column straight ahead, and she's flying on pure momentum at this point.

Salaya screams. The knife shatters her shield and hacks into her outstretched arm and in some distant realm of her mind she can feel a surge of pain. The orc tries to strike again but his excitement is too great and he crashes into her. This time she responds with a gout of fiery energy that throws them apart. She follows up, her training still holding out, orange fire flooding over her assailant.

Without wings, Octave struggles to adjust herself. As she hurtles at the column, her mind wells with thoughts. What does she know? She slips into them, letting the magic mingle with her feelings and wash her downstream until she's caught onto just the right angle-

Salaya can smell the orc's greasy hair singeing, but the beast steps out of the fire his leer unbroken. His nostrils sniff the scent of her fresh wound and he lunges again.

-just enough of to guide her body past the column, but now she's lost control-

The knife bites into Salaya's arm again and again she screams. Nobody can hear her over the din of fighting. Everyone is too far away.

-and hurtles toward the ground in a rapid spin-

The orc drops his staff and reaches out a massive clawed hand at her. Salaya opens her mouth and belches out sparks.

-again she's in the stream but this time she's in the rapids and can't get to shore-

He steps back and she falls to the ground. Another orc approaches. Tears fill her eyes.

-another column and again she's able to steer clear at the cost of more control-

Snot drips from Salaya's nose. No training could have prepared her for this.

-she's so close but so is destruction-

He looms overhead with that enraging leer. No idiot orc can stump Salaya. It's not possible.

Octave stabilises. The ground is close enough that she can see a rabbit hopping frantically for cover as an avian shadow grows larger on its back. She pulls up like an albatross gliding over the ocean and now all that momentum is pushing her back up, away from the looming earth. Her mind treads water. Her hand brushes the hair from her face.

Sitting down, Salaya gathers herself one more time and blue fire, crackling with energy, issues forth. Not a wave, not a gout, but a concentrated jet, and not aimed at the orc, but at the ornament around his neck. The necklace itself has no special resistances and shatters under the pressure. This time it's more than just hair singeing. The orc howls in agony and flounders backward into the second orc.

With just a little more effort, Octave bursts over the rock formations and hurtles back toward the mountains until the air pushes her to stop. Again she reaches a zenith and there is that integral second where she hangs stationary.

Both orcs wither and crumple like leaves before the force of Salaya's inferno. As she looks around for more targets, she realises the handful of remaining orcs are fleeing, their craven cries carrying them back over the pastures they had just looted so freely. But the convoys have their own archers. No orcs make it back into the dark safety of the forest.

Octave's second fall is guided back onto the plateau beneath the ledge. No wings; she holds herself aloft by treading water alone. Panting, shoulders heaving, legs unsure at finding themselves of use again, she clutches at a crooked old pine, its outermost needles still fused brown from the late snow melt. After a minute or so she walks stiffly to a bundle stashed beneath a rock and rummages for a drink.

“Nice landing.” Octave chokes on her water and whirls around. Two figures stand behind her on the rocks. The first, the speaker, tall and insatiable, fiery and smirking, hands on her hips. Trouble. The second, spectacles, a slight stoop, government-issued uniform, graying hair. Quintessential bean counter.

“Well done, Salaya.” Ebin claps Salaya on the back. “You're a true mage now.” Salaya wipes her face and catches her breath. Somehow it doesn't seem right that the noise of battle is gone. A robin chirrups overhead.

“Is everyone alright?”

“Oh yes.” Ebin is grinning. “A few minor injuries, but orcs aren't that serious once you get over the jitters. They lack constitution.” He looks Salaya over. “Looks like one more injury. Annya! Over here.”

Broga wanders over. “Good job.” he grins. “I was worried leaving you open like that, but it looks like you handled yourself well. Just a couple small scratches too.”

Small scratches? Salaya looks down at her arm. Her powder blue shirt with the lovely gold weave is ruined, but as she rolls up her sleeve, the wounds are smaller than they seemed when the orc's knife bit into her arm. She flexes and the pain isn't overwhelming. In the heat of the fight it had felt so much worse. She examines the knife still lying on the ground where it dropped from the shaman's dying hand, and it looks scarecely sharper than a table knife, jagged and chipped as it is. She watches Ebin and the others gather the orc corpses into a pile. The villages rush out of hiding. An elderly woman throws her arms around Broga. “Hold still.” fusses Annya. Salaya only winces a little as she cleanses the wounds with a magical puff and wraps linen bandages over them. “There we go. Only a couple days until you're good as new.” She gives the arm an affectionate kiss.

“I thought I smelled something foul on the wind.” says Octave, sitting down.

“I'll bet it's not the first time either.” says Tal.

“How did you find me here?”

“I can always find you. Nice breasts, by the way.”

“Thanks. I'm tremendously proud of them.” The bean counter turns red and looks away while Octave pulls her shirt back on. Tal only crosses her arms, long dress to match her hair, short smirk to match her temper. “Alright, what's this about then?” Octave asks when she's presentable.

“Right.” says the bean counter turning around, all business. “You may leave us now, Ms. Tal. Thank you for helping us locate her.”

“Oh no.” says Tal. “I'm itching to see how this goes.”

“Very well then. I am Ranim Harki with the Branch of Logistics and Organisation, and I'm here to invite you to the battle camp at Lakeside to aid in the war effort.” Ranim gives a short bow.

“Sadly I must decline.” says Octave. “War isn't my specialty, and I'm sure you have more than enough eager participants. I'll sit this one out with a clear conscience.” She bows slightly, never looking away from Tal.

“I'm sorry, but this isn't an offer, Octave.” Ranim looks genuinely sorry as he says it. “This is an official decree from His Majesty the King that all are obliged to. We've gone to the guild leaders and hired all their members. Failure to comply will result in sanctions and expulsion.”

“Cheer up.” says Tal. “Lakeside is one of the better camps. I hear it even has a castle.”

“I suppose it's my fault for trusting mercenaries.” mutters Octave. “But why did you have to lead him to me here, Tal?”

“You haven't suffered enough.”

“Oooo, thank you so much. You're all such heroes. Especially you. You look just like my granddaughter if only here hair were a little shorter.” Salaya's bruised ribs groan in protest at the crushing hug, but there's nothing for it. The old peasant woman insisted on an embrace for every one of her 'noble rescuers'. Annya was the only one who really hugged back, of course.

“Well done, everyone. The village is saved, and so is the king's reputation.” says Ebin to cheers. The rain had stopped at some point, though Salaya isn't sure when. Normally she'd be checking on the others, making sure everyone is alright. She'd be a leader worthy of her position. Instead she leans against a tree and watches Annya attend to the last few scrapes. Her legs shudder from adrenaline loss. “Back to the carriages. We're still on schedule.”

“What's the name of the camp we're headed to?”

“Which one? Erm, let's see. It's that one with the castle by the lake. Um, Lakeview. That's it.”

“Here you are.” Ranim hands Octave a parchment slip. “This should have all the key details. You'll report to Captain Merth no later than tomorrow at noon. Any questions?”

“Yes, one. This doesn't say what my pay will be. Will I have to settle it with this Captain Merth?”

“Oh, that won't be necessary. All the mercenaries are being paid a fixed sum. You'll get yours on payday, just like the soldiers.”

Octave groans. “A fixed sum to fight a war. The world is falling apart.”

“Well that's why we're recruiting you.” says Ranim. “Where's your loyalty? Where's your pride? We're pulling out everyone worthy of a sword. Even the students are coming out to save the kingdom. Would you rather we be overrun with orcs while you bargain for a better rate? After this is over, your renown will reach the stars themselves. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and all it will cost you is orc blood.”

Octave groans again. Tal's smirk is bordering on a snarl: a warning. Octave ignores it. “Orcs aren't real.”