Admiral Tar was walking around her office like a dangerous predator behind bars. Her lips were slightly moving, repeating the text that she had just read, which was still blinking on her terminal screen.

If you’ve ever faced military people in your life, you most likely know these are individuals who seem to have serious trouble processing negatives. Somewhere amidst all the times they’d screamed “yes, m’lady”, the neurological link to concepts such as “no”, “can’t” and most importantly – “failure” had degraded. Defeat – the face of true horror for any warrior, especially those of higher rank.

Right now, circling her office like a sandstorm, the admiral was attempting to reverse her can-do brain damage and process what she had just read. The several underlined words were silently, almost fearfully blinking on the screen – “Mission failure. Expecting further instruction.”

Of course, attached to said short message, was a more detailed report, hastily put together, most likely by the youngest member of the operation – lieutenant Hab’rulah Zeb. Tar was waiting for her rage to subside before reading through it more thoroughly.

Although to be fair, she wasn’t expecting said document to bring her anything other than a stronger headache, which was already forming as a throb in her temples. Whatever horrifying obstacle had proven itself insurmountable by the most capable squad of earth warriors, she doubted she could do much about it from thousands of hal’matri away.

No, something else needed to be done here, more inspiring and stable than some words on the terminal screen, to reassure her countrywomen beyond the ocean. But the admiral still hadn’t figured out what that was exactly.

The squad she’d sent to AWA was more than excellent – they had the strong leadership of general Shankh – a woman who had little patience for complaints and delays to execution, they had lieutenant Zeb’s genius level intellect. Although not really a capable warrior in the physical sense of the word, she had gained her place amongst the Earth nation’s finest precisely because of her exceptional cognitive ability. Still, there had been a circumstance that not even Tar herself could’ve accurately predicted.

The one file she had already opened made her feel as though someone had poured salt into the open wound of her military confidence. It had been a thirty second long clip, made by the black box of the Flamethrower machine. Amidst the loud screeching and howling which had broken through the admiral’s terminal speakers as well as all the dust flying in the air on the recording, a single figure started slowly coming into focus, before Tar’s shocked eyes.

The figure of a woman dressed in full AWA Warden combat armour.

Whilst everything around the woman was breaking off, flying and spinning uncontrollably from the hurricane wind, the Warden looked immovable, like a statue with a bone-chilling expression on her sharp features.

“Impossible”, Tar’s ego kept saying from the depths of her consciousness. “And yet – there it is”, her senses cut her off.

A wind storm.

These women were almost a myth on the Twin continents, because their Gift had become so rare in recent years, and yet still apparently there were still women like that amidst the Wardens of AWA.

Though a proud lady of the Earth gift, K’hip’aris Tar couldn’t deny that the Air gift was truly a horrifying sight to behold. People on the Air twin had told stories throughout the hecarotations about the terrifying power of the wind storms, who seemed to possess strength rivalled only by the Goddess herself.

There was no way they could’ve prepared for this option. After all, all of the data their spies had gathered from the Twin continents seemed to indicate that for the past couple of decarotations the wind storms were no more than a few hundred women out of the multimillion population of AWA.

Tomorrow… Tomorrow is a good day, Tar kept repeating to herself, as she was still pacing around her office, desperately trying to convince herself that she had more time to respond to her most capable warrior’s plea for assistance. Rushed decisions were, after all, almost always incorrect.

She had a plan, of course, but she was not yet sure how to present it to her subordinates on the other side of the ocean, without losing their trust. She would need more time to find the right words to express what need to be asked of them.

Let them wait till tomorrow. The morning was, after all, wiser than the evening.