Four months previously…

Plumes of smoke filled the air as the city burned. It was clear to Kel that the battle was hopeless even without the constant stream of messengers rushing in and out of the command room, each bearing more bad news. Duke Wahir Abdurk stood next to a map of the city, his brow withered in frustration beneath his ceremonial turban. Kel understood the impossibility of the task before him. The fort of Manreb Pass had been breached and overtaken. The Krovian army had dispatched a forward force straight to Tammar to press the advantage against Abdurk, who had been a thorn in their side since the start of the war and who was a linchpin in the command of the eastern front. Militarily, Tammar was mainly a training center for fresh recruits. The green soldiers there were no match for the battle hardened Krovian invaders.

“Enough! Sir Haroud, Sir Satolah, Dame Beriss, front and center,” came the Duke’s command.

Immediately, Kel and the Duke’s two other personal bodyguards assembled in front of him. “We await Your Grace’s order!” they said as they knelt.

“We cannot hold the city. Our current priority is to retreat and regroup. We can still get most of our surviving forces away to other cities and forts. Each of you will escape out to the palace walls and take command of one of the outer barracks. Escape from the city, passing by each fortification and picking up what survivors you can on the way out. Haroud, you take the north and head for Fort Parsa. Satolah, take the south and escape to Fort Mekis. Beriss, you’ll take the western barracks and fall back towards Ishtran.”

“How can we make it out?” questioned Haroud. “Our position is already surrounded.”

“Their commander is Herzholdt. He’s a glory hound. If I go out and challenge him personally, he’ll abandon his position to kill me himself. It won’t break their discipline entirely, but his lieutenants will be distracted and more cautious on their own.“

“There’s no way you can survive drawing that much attention to yourself, even if you did manage to kill him,” Kel objected.

“There are always sacrifices in war,” the Duke said, betraying not a hint of fear or regret in his voice. “Your kindness has always been misspent on our battlefields.” She moved to object, but the Duke held up a hand to silence her. “I will not be swayed. If you would make my final duty easier, there is a favor you can perform that would ease my mind.”

“Anything,” she replied.

“My daughter is currently living with my cousin in Actran. I do not know how much longer this country can last. Please get her out of Irdishan and ensure that she is safe and able to live away from this war.”

“I swear it by the goddess.”

The Duke merely nodded. “You have my orders. Dismissed!”

A scant few moments later, the three bodyguards were watching from a window as the Duke flew over the inner gates on a magical thunder cloud, raining down lightning bolts on the black armored invaders. “HERZHOLDT!” boomed his magically amplified voice. “COME OUT AND FACE ME!” A gust of wind blew aside the hail of arrows which was swiftly unleashed at him. “ARE YOU AFRAID OF ONE LITTLE OLD MAN?” Several more blasts of lightning accompanied by taunts erupted from the cloud before the Krovians began to draw back, leaving an empty semicircle around the Duke. A pale man in slim black armor pushed his way through their ranks, striding out to face Duke Abdurk. His hair was short in the back and with a widow peak in the front, dyed a pure shade of white that was unnatural for a man who was only entering his middle years. He held no weapon, but the edges of his black and red cape fluttered in the opposite direction of the wind, reaching out towards the Duke almost like a hungry dog straining against its leash. His expressions was set in a smirk more befitting a gambler who’d just made a lucky role of the dice than a man in the middle of a war.

“You have made an excellent choice, so-called Lion of Irdishan,” he said, his voice silky smooth and filled with malice. “Can you imagine if you had died on the blade of some nameless infantryman? No, of all the men here, only I am fit to take your head.” The Duke’s sole response was another blast of lightning. Herzholdt waved his hand, and a wall of darkness sprang up in front of him, the lightning fizzling to nothing as it was absorbed into the shadows.

“That’s our cue,” said Satolah. The three of them nodded to each other and were off, running out the back of the room. As they cleared the door, the other two broke away, splitting up to head north and south as Kel continued dashing across the courtyard to the barracks door. The lookout quickly opened the door, and she brushed past him in her rush up the stairs and down the hall, bursting straight into the head officer’s room.

“Major! We’re cutting our way out. Our orders are to perform a fighting retreat to every fortification between here and the western city limits. Then we break engagement and flee to Ishtran,” she ordered. The major saluted and had the garrison organized and ready to cut their way out in less than 10 minutes. The first indication the Krovians had of the attack was the barracks doors suddenly flying open, followed immediately by four fireballs launched into their ranks. Just as the Duke had predicted, the invaders weren’t on the top of their game. The rapid magical barrage had thrown them into confusion, unable to defend themselves from the onrush of soldiers barreling out of the door and cutting them down. The enemy unit quickly dissolved into an every-man-for-himself scramble to flee from the Irdishani warriors.

Things proceeded well on the way to the first defensive position, with no sign of invaders beyond the guard unit they had decimated. Yet as Kel’s group approached the tower, they saw it had been overtaken, the bodies of Irdishani soldiers littering the ground and men in Krovian armor visible from some of the windows.

“Damn them!” the major said. “We’ve got to attack!”

“Belay that!” Kel said. “We can’t fight every enemy we come across. We need to move on to the next position and hope they’ve held out longer than this one did.”

“Easy for you to say!” shouted back the major. “This isn’t your home! Your family isn’t being slaughtered right now!”

“There’s nothing you can do,” she responded firmly. “They’ve taken the tower, and the ones outside have a clear path straight back to the main body of their army. Look! Their lookouts have already spotted us!”

“Then we can kill two birds with one stone. Mages, activate the failsafe wards. Bring the tower down blocking their escape route.”

“WHAT?” screamed Kel.

“Didn’t know about this, did you girl? We’ve got little surprises for anyone who manages to take our fortifications.”

“No, I knew that! I mean you can’t be serious about trapping the Krovians between the fallen tower and us! A unit of that size is sure to have a necromancer!” she frantically replied.

“Too afraid to face down an enemy with nowhere to run? Fine! More Krovian blood for the rest of us!” He turned to the unit’s mages. “NOW!” With only a few quick words and gestures on the war mages’ part, the stones of the tower’s base began to rattle, tearing themselves apart. The entire edifice lurched to the left, falling on the back end of the Krovian unit which was just now beginning to form ranks facing the Irdishani. The black clad soldiers were now trapped in a wedge, the river and the rubble of the fallen tower behind them, the Irdishani in front.

“RETREAT!” Kel ordered.

“Belay that! ADVANCE!” the major shouted as he ran forward, leading the charge personally. The soldiers shouted a war cry as they followed him, and Kel, having nowhere else to go, joined alongside them.

As the enemy braced for the certain defeat from the larger unit’s charge, a voice called out. “My death for Krovia!”

The other invaders responded in a chorus of shouts. “MY DEATH FOR KROVIA!” As one, they began to convulse strangely. The Irdishani, filled with righteous anger, ignored their odd undulations, falling upon them and starting a fierce melee. Yet the Krovians fought back with an unearthly fierceness, throwing themselves at the attackers with crazed bloodlust, uncaring for their own safety or even survival.

“Gods!” the major exclaimed as he sent a powerful stroke of his scimitar clean through the torso of one of the Krovians, bisecting him. “They fight like madmen!”

“They aren’t mad. They’re dead!” Kel said, her own sword flaring with pink energy as it cleaved through the necks of one Krovian after another, sending their heads sailing to the ground. “What did they even teach you in training? These fanatics would rather let themselves be turned into the undead as a final reprisal than die in a fight against overwhelming odds!” All around, the inexperienced Irdishani were being slaughtered by the unexpected ferocity of the counterattack, flailing about and hopelessly trying to hack away at their limbs or organs as they would against a human opponent. “THE HEADS! CUT OFF THE HEADS!” Kel shouted. A quick scan to survey the scene showed that the major was missing. Looking down, she saw that the upper half of the Krovian he’d bisected had tackled him to the ground and crawled on top of him. She swiftly kicked it off and pierced her sword straight through the zombie’s skull, but could see from his empty stare that the major was already dead.

“Stop, stop stop!” Niva slammed her mug down on the table. “Does this story end with you saving a burning orphanage or something?”

Kel simply stared into her own cup. “No. The fallen tower and skirmish alerted the rest of the invaders in the area. It was a bloody slog all the rest of the way out. Most of the supplies had to be left behind thanks to casualties in the baggage train. What few survivors were left, we lost to the desert, monsters, or Krovian raids. There were less than 40 of us still alive by the time I got them to Ishtran.”

“Okay, maybe all that time in an army skewed your perspective on this, but when normal people ask for a war story? We want to hear one where you save an orphanage or challenge the enemy commander to a duel and valiantly defeat him in an epic sword battle, not one of the ones where you lose and everyone dies.”

“There weren’t a lot of stories like that back in Irdishan,” Kel said, taking another drink.

“What happened with the daughter?” Niva said in an unsubtle attempt to change the subject.

“After getting patched up from the trek to Ishtran, I had to make it to Actran, where I found out that Duke Abdurk’s daughter had already fled out here. So I followed, which I think was what the Duke intended all along. He could tell I wasn’t cut out for that life, no matter how good I may have been at it. It gave me a responsibility for something away from that losing war.”

“And you just left? You aren’t going to get kicked out of the knighthood for abandoning a holy crusade?”

“My only duty was a self appointed one. I didn’t want to become a templar and sit around in shiny armor as a guard at a giant cathedral. I wanted to do good, and I thought a war against Krovia would be the best place for that. But what did it accomplish? I saved some lives, but I had to make so many sacrifices, most of which ultimately accomplished nothing.”

“So even you divine ass kissers have doubts about your lives too, eh?” Kel didn’t respond, looking back down into her cup forlornly. “Oh come on, you always get mad and snipe back at me when I make this kind of crack at you. Don’t tell me I’m making you even mopier.”

“No… you’re right,” Kel sighed as her reflection dolefully frowned back up at her from her cup. “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life any more. I do still believe that the goddess has a plan for me, that I have a calling that can make a real difference in the world. But right now… I can’t even imagine what that plan could be.”