The far hill jutted high above the otherwise flat plains, visible from miles around. Low, lifeless grass grew in patches upon its marked surface, large stones and boulders jutting out like ugly warts. The sun hung barely over it, having just risen some hours ago.

Purple clad and armed and armored, the group of Hilvans clambered over the top of the hill and stopped as their party followed. Ten, twenty, thirty, by the time they had all breached the hill Alden had counted nearly fifty of them in war gear, to say nothing of the plain clothed and unarmed carriage tenders. A mage, too, by the looks of it, what with the purple robes trailing loosely behind the hooded figure.

Most striking of them all, however, was their target. Even from afar the knight’s golden hair could be seen, flowing pristinely down her back from underneath a helmet marked with a strand of purple plumage. She was not the only woman amongst the group of Hilvan’s, but her unique style set her fortuitously apart. Not fortuitous for her, of course; she was a sniper’s dream in a world without snipers. A fact Alden intended to change through the use of his magic.

“That her? Amice of whatever?” Uhtric asked. Alden nodded. “Guess you don’t need to blend in when you can outrun a horse.”

“I’ll give her a lesson on the virtues of keeping a low profile, then.”

Laying flat against the soft plain’s terrain, Alden and his men had covered themselves in a thin layer of cut grass. With a little testing they had found that those hiding were almost imperceptible to the eye, even when actively looking for them. Without such active effort from the unsuspecting Hilvan’s, they might as well be invisible. The perfect spot to scout them out, and ambush them if need be. And even more perfect to let loose a bolt of magic.

Stretching out his hand, Alden conjured the power within him and formed a small ball of dense red light, thinking of flames and bullets. An incendiary round, more to terrify her soldiers with a blast of fire than anything practical.

Aiming for the center of the knight’s mass, Alden willed his magic bullet forward.

The shot rang out, a loud booming noise that echoed across the plains as the red ball of magic broke the sound barrier. On the hill Amice Witchester stood speaking to her soldiers one second, and the next her body was lifted from the earth and sent tumbling over the side of the hill.

Booming echoes gave way to angry shouts as the Hilvans produced their blades and pointed and argued over where it had come from.

“They’re not helping her?” asked Alden, incredulous.

“Maybe they don’t like her much?” Uhtric offered.

As wonderful as the suggestion was, the sudden reappearance of purple plumage from over the ridge answered the question for them. Resolute, the knight Amice looked no worse for wear than she had before, as if the blast of magic had been little more than a strong breeze.

She lifted a hand and pointed in their direction, dark eyes peering from beneath the slits of her helm. No. At him. She was pointing at him.

He had never run so fast in his life. One second he was laying down, hand outstretched, and the next he was a hundred feet away, lungs and legs burning with effort. Each step was almost a leap unto itself, spurred on by the invisible force of fear that nipped at his heels the entire way. Would he make it? They had a mage, would he be shot? Burned? Cut into pieces?

He didn’t bother looking back. He only ran and ran, his legs burning more fiercely with every step, every inch as they propelled him forward. Then she came into view.

It was quick, like the flash of a camera. There, then gone again. He didn’t slow down the first time. A frightened mind playing tricks on him, that was all, or maybe a passing bird, that was all. That was all.

Then she came into view again, a silvery-white blur of shining metal and golden hair. This time she stopped. Like a pillar of marble she remained completely still, even as Alden crashed into her and bounced off, landing hard. The ground was becoming a good friend of his, it seemed..

Gasping painfully, Alden looked up to the woman. Thin, pink lips sat perfectly straight against pale skin, the upper half of her face concealed by armor. No smile crossed her lips, no sneer, nor any other hint that she was at all pleased or displeased by the turn of events she found herself in.

Amice Witchester. The name had meant nothing to him before the mission had been assigned to him. There were no tales spoken with that name, no passing mentions of respect or dark rumors. Nothing at all that would pique one’s interest despite the fact that the woman was the strongest knight Alden had ever met.

Amice Witchester

Age: 21

Health: 1500/1500

Mana: 200/200

Level: 240

Stats

Strength: 320

Intelligence: 56

Wisdom: 180

Dexterity: 220

Agility: 378

Endurance: 332

Luck: 15

Charisma: 5

It was unbelievable. The woman made every knight Alden had faced before seem like children playing with sticks. Even the monsters he had faced til now had been nothing compared to her.

Kneeling before her, Alden could not bear to meet her cold gaze. He couldn’t even move, his body paralyzed and shaking. Would she kill him? Torture, first? Silently he prayed for a quick death.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice soft and cold as snow.

“A-Alden,” he stammered.

Tilting her head, Amice gave him a cursory look.

“A soldier? No, you don’t have the feel of a soldier. Soldier’s need both hands, I’m told,” she said. “And you use magic.”

“Are soldiers forbidden to use magic?”

“No,” she said, tilting her head again. “Just unusual.”

“What is to be done with me?” he asked. He was not fond of whatever game this was.

“Do you surrender?”

Waving a mocking hand at himself, Alden mustered the courage to stare the woman in the eyes. Red, like two rubies carved into a statue. Red eyes and snow white skin. She was an albino, he realized.

“I don’t believe I have any other choice at the moment,” he said.

“You could choose to die. Many do.”

“I choose to live, if that is acceptable.”

“It is. I’m of the same mind, really. Death is so odd, don’t you think? Peaceful, the atheists tell me, like sleep. And joyous, so say the priests, when you make the final journey to the afterlife. I don’t believe that, though. So many run from it and do all they can to stay alive. If death brought such joy they would not run from it, don’t you think? Surely death is a bad thing then.”

“If you say so,” Alden replied.

The woman nodded, then lifted him to his feet as easily as one would a child, her hand like iron around his arm. From her pack she produced a length of rope, pausing as she went to restrain him, uncertain.

Eventually she decided to wrap the rope around his waist, first, like a belt. Once secured, she bound his remaining hand to the belt, cinching it tight. He pulled at the rope, testing it, and found his arm completely immobilized. The woman was an expert as well as a monster.

Pushing him along with a powerful arm, they regrouped with the Hilvan soldiers in the village. The village people had escaped to their homes at the first sight of the Hilvan sigil, the frightened families peeking from behind doorways. A blameless action.

None of Alden’s soldiers could be seen in the village, captured or otherwise.

Good, he thought. They had escaped, or were at least in the midst of doing so. Either way he felt relieved, though he did his best to not look so. Any sort of positive emotion would garner attention, if not ire.

Handing him off to a few of her soldiers, Amice Witchester left him as she began her inspection of the village. Already her soldiers were escorting the men and women into the center of the village as they searched their homes. He had little time to look, however, as the two guards assigned to him pulled him away by the rope around his waist.

He struggled, at first, indignantly digging his heels into the dirt and refusing to budge an inch. The Hilvan’s were having none of it. The first blow to his face was not so bad. A right hook, he saw it coming from a mile off and, once it made contact, moved with the flow of the punch. Enough to lessen the impact, but it was a far cry from dodging.

His guards were not amused.

One guard stepped behind him, wrapping his arms around Alden and holding him in place as the second guard squared up in front of him. The second blow caught him in the stomach, hard but tolerable. Alden flashed the guard an amused, spiteful grin. He broke into a full smile from ear to ear when he saw how angry it made his captor.

The third blow caught him in the same place as the second, then came the fourth, then the fifth. By the end of it Alden had lost count, though he suspected his ribs had broken sometime after the fifteenth.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, they dragged him to one of the empty hovels the village used for storage and tossed him inside, closing the door and shrouding him in darkness.

A rickety thing, the door was made of several long gray pieces of misshapen driftwood that left numerous small holes and gaps in its surface, allowing yellow light to shine meekly through. It didn’t much matter if it did or not, however. Alden’s eyes adjusted to the darkness almost instantly, illuminating the empty interior as if it had no roof to block the sun’s light.

Sitting upright, the pain in his chest flared up sharply, forcing him back down. Once the pain subsided, Alden gave a tentative pull against his restraints. Nothing. It would take someone with twice his strength to budge them. Sighing, he turned to his only remaining option.

Applying healing magic without the use of his hand proved almost too difficult a task for him. Each time his veins burned as the magic broke through to new locations, as if the mere act of focusing magic away from his limbs was unnatural to the way of things. Diagnosis magic itself proved impossible; twice he drained his stores of mana in their entirety as he focused the magic, yet he had learned nothing of his own condition.

An angry roar sat at the back of his throat, trying to escape. He held it back; any noise would alert the guards, which would mean more beatings, more broken bones. But his rage was not to be stifled, and the roar became a low growl of frustration. What was he doing wrong? He knew the theory, had the mana, and even possessed an enhanced learning ability. If it were possible, and it was, he should have been able to do it.

Switching to healing magic proved more fruitful. The searing sensation of his veins did not diminish, but slowly, over the course of hours, Alden’s bones were set back into place, his bruises cleared away.

Skill Up

The Magic Control Skill has advanced to Rank B

Reward: 50xp

Skill Up

Learned Internal Mana Control Rank F

Reward: 50xp

The new Skill was much appreciated, though it came with more questions than answers. Questions he did not have the energy to try and answer.

They came for him just after noon. The door opened with a thud as the soldiers hurried in, their figures shadowy as blinding sunlight poured in from behind them. With rough hands and violent taunts they pulled Alden from his place on the ground and dragged him out of the hovel, a few of them landing harsh blows against his ribs and kidneys. Never before had he been so thankful for healing magic as he was now.

Plopping him down in the center of the village, the soldiers backed off and formed a semi-circle around him. The people of the village looked on from their homes, grim and bruised and scared, but alive. That was some consolation, at least.

With graceful steps that did not match the woman’s brutal strength, Amice Witchester approached him casually, as one would a long time friend. She had not an ounce of malice in her as she stared down at him with red eyes, her pale pink lips stretched into a thin neutral line. If the woman had any emotion at all, Alden could not discern what it was.

She circled him, eyeing him down like a hawk. Her footfalls were almost inaudible, and when she walked behind him, out of sight, it was as if she had disappeared entirely until she walked back into view. A ghost, pale and silent and ever so frightening.

“Why were you here?” she finally asked.

“Thought that was pretty obvious,” Alden said. “What with the magic and all.”

“To kill me, then?”

“Something like that.”

“A shame they did not know me well, then. I’m quite strong, after all. Even my mother says so.”

“Your mother?” he asked.

“Yes. A foreigner, from the southern mountains. She’s the one who trained me. I haven’t beaten her yet, though.”

Confusion plagued his mind as he tried to make sense of what she was telling him. The southern mountains? A foreign mother? What did it matter to him?

The southern mountains were home to numerous small countries, the vast majority of them secluded and isolationist. To trade with one was considered a rare event; to have one leave their home to marry some foreign noble would have been a unique event, something that would have occurred only a handful of times before. And something that would have been common knowledge, if it were known. Rumors and gossip would have seen to that.

But did Drygallis know? Alden hadn’t been told this information, certainly. And to have inherited her strength from her mother’s training, as she claimed? They most certainly didn’t tell him that.

“Am I to die?” he asked. It was the only thought running through his head. A classic cliche, the villain monologuing before killing their captive.

Channeling what little willpower he could, Alden gave her as fierce a stare as he could muster. A pitiful thing, no doubt; he was no more fierce than a puppy before her.

“No,” she said, her head tilting to the side in amused curiosity.

“Then why tell me about your family? Your mother?”

“I was merely trying to make small talk. Is this not how it is done? Trading info for info?” Was she insane? Or just stupid? No. Her Intelligence stat was double what most people had. Charisma, then? It was a mere 5. The lowest he’d seen.

“We’re at war,” he said.

“Do people at war not make small talk?”

“Not with enemies,” he said. Glancing at her soldiers, they seemed just as put off by her behavior as he was. They exchanged uneasy glances with one another, yet not one stepped forward to give a complaint. They were afraid. He couldn’t blame them. The knight who led them was an enigma, a strange woman who had the strength of a hundred men and the common sense of a child. An unpredictable combination.

“Strange. Mother always said to treat my enemies with respect. Is small talk not respectful?”

“You’re a strange woman, you know that?” he said.

“I have heard that before,” she said, more amused than angered. “Can you tell me why? Father could never say it in a way I could understand, and Mother… well, Mother is more strange than I, according to Father.”

“I can tell you,” he said. “But only alone.”

The woman known as Amice gave an amused smirk, and Alden had the unusual feeling in the pit of his stomach that he would not like the events to come.