“Get up.” Lestra’s voice was weak.

George was surprised to see her as he woke up. He had expected her to lose patience and go off on her own. But there she stood, above him, torch in hand.

The torch light had made it through the night and cast itself over Lestra’s face. The bases of her eyes were red. But aside from those tear-stained markings, and the sorrowful ridges which hung over her eyes, she kept as firm a stare as possible. “We keep going,” she said.

George sat up and got to his feet. He wondered how much sleep Lestra had let him get before deciding they had waited long enough. The bags of his eyes still weighed heavy, but at the very least, his stomach had taken their place as that which begged most fervently at his mind. And unlike sleep, he at least had the peace of mind that there was nothing that could be done in the tunnels that would soothe his hunger and thirst. All he could do was push on.

Their pace never recovered the vigor it had lost the prior day, and the tunnel sloped upward, making for a more arduous trek. With each step, their path became more futile. George’s fear of what would happen if they caught up with the graldor army, the dread of abandoning Lestra, became a fantasy. They had no chance of catching up.

Specks of dust glimmered in the distance. Finally, a light streamed ahead- a sweet, natural light. George managed to conjure one last burst of energy to propel himself forward. A vine-rope ladder climbed down to meet him, its rungs tread and worn. Lestra froze.

“Come on,” George said, mindlessly pursuing the way out. White, wispy clouds hung above the hole.

The desperate smile on his face collapsed under its own weight as he climbed further up the ladder. Dark leaves and a black ring surrounded the glimpse of sky. The ceiling screamed, charred like the rodent in the graldor camp.

Ash assaulted his nostrils as he pushed himself up onto a wooden platform- the same he had scrambled onto in their first mission. This was not the Vaalliya he remembered. The rich browns and faint greens had faded to desolation as smoke mingled with the brush around him. The ground was scarred and bruised by fallen swords and ruthless marches.

Above, three holes pierced the leafy dome. Rays of sunlight shined through the wells. Theirs was a heavenly light, serene as it fell. Like missiles.

George turned away from the soot-laden air which stung his eyes and looked back down from where he emerged. He thought for a moment to tell Lestra to stay down. What would he even say? Everything’s alright? It wasn’t. Her home had been torched.

“D-don’t,” he stuttered as Lestra pushed out of her frozen state and made her way up the ladder.

She paused as she stepped onto the platform, and took a deep breath as she had done the last time they were in Vaaliya. George tried to recall the woody fragrance which had lingered on that day. If he could, maybe he would still be able to find it buried beneath the smoke. And surely then she would be able to find it as well, and it could bring her some solace, hope.

Lestra exhaled and silently walked on.

Bodies lay strewn in their path. Faced down, their garb layered in soot, they looked like rocks. George tried to view them that way. It felt wrong to ignore them, yet in some ways even worse to have to acknowledge them. So, he made them parts of the Earth. That way he could still bear to see them.

Lestra drifted as a spirit up the branch-like path. Her clothes, even marred by the dirt of the tunnel, were a bright spot among the war-torn scenery. Her light hair whisked in the breeze, and the greens of her cloth shined like emeralds. George tried to keep close to her as she led to the hall of the nief.

The front of the hall had been ripped and burned away, leaving the inside exposed to the elements. The place had been ransacked. Its shrine had been robbed of its light crystal, and its marigolds were trampled. The older elves which had cast their judgmental glances and stroked their beards were nowhere to be seen. Their stands lay in ruins at the sides, and no corpse sat with them. But the hall was not empty. At the end of it, beneath the throne, a body lay, writhing. A silver circlet crowned his auburn, bloodstained hair.

No- George thought to himself. Not him. Not the nief. Not her father.

Lestra darted toward her fallen father and sank over him. She pressed her hand against the hole which marred his stomach. Her lips trembled.

“F-father,” Lestra murmured. “We’re going to get you out of here. We’re going to get you to safety. We’re going to save Vaaliya.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Orell whispered back to his daughter in a hoarse voice.

“No, I needed to be here sooner. I could have warned you- I knew it. I knew it!” She cried out. “I never should have left.”

“Lestra, listen to me.” With the last of his strength, Orell lifted his head; his mouth curled in a snarl, while his eyes somberly met his daughter’s. “You have to get out of here. No matter what.”

Lestra shook her head. “N-No, I can’t leave you- I can’t leave the people. I’m supposed to be their guardian. That’s the duty of a nief. How can I abandon them when I couldn’t even stand with them to begin with? I should have come sooner. I should have known sooner.”

“I knew...” Orell sighed and leaned back. “I knew that this was a possibility when we decided to bring back the stone. But the nobles wanted it- something the people could rally behind... so, I sought to prepare. I wanted to bring Vaaliya into the fold of the guild. I thought that they might have come to our aid. But I was too late.”

Lestra gasped. “So that’s why when I brought the kine stone... The kine stone- where is it? Did they take it?”

“You need to get to safety.” Orell cradled Lestra’s pendant in his hands. “Do you think that our forefathers would willingly entrust humans with such an artifact? What they gave, what you brought back, was a decoy. Our kine stone was disguised as an ordinary light crystal and affixed to a necklace that was passed down from nief to nief. A secret kept by only the nief, and their descendants.” A strand of Lestra’s hair fell to his palm with the pendant.

“I-I did it- I did this for nothing?” She shuddered back.

“Elven pride.” Orell snickered and rested his eyes.

“F-father?” Lestra removed her father’s cape And tied it around the wound. “George!”

she snapped. “Help me get him out of here. Please.”

George rushed over and grabbed the nief’s ankles. They felt cold. With Lestra holding his

wrists, the two managed to carry Orell’s body outside the hall. But the body was heavy and motionless. And they were tired. There was nowhere to take him, nowhere they could get to in time. They hobbled a good way down the path before Lestra stopped and collapsed over her father’s body. Her nails cut into his skin as she clutched his palms. “George,” she said solemnly.

“In the shrub, there grows a blue flower. Please, if there’s any left, any at all, gather it, and bring it over.”

George nodded and let the nief’s legs down before scurrying into the brush. He swatted through the branches- thin stems bulked by clumps of ash. A stalk appeared at his feet, adorned in whorls of small blue specks. George reached down and picked it.

As George gathered the blue flower, Lestra lifted her head, unable to bear the sight of what lay beneath her any longer. Ahead, near the wooden platform, she saw rough armor. Backs turned to their conquest, a squadron of graldor marched. And their general stood in the center. A gnawed red banner hung from his shoulder. As if he could sense her stare, the general turned.

Lestra grabbed her bow and took an arrow from her quiver. She pulled back the arrow, moving her body with it with all the force she could muster. Her eyes locked with the graldor general’s. She released and fell to her knees.

The arrow fought and clawed through the air to reach its target. It shattered against the general’s blade: a great sword wrought from a black metal.

George saw it. He saw his chance to get himself to safety. That fantasy he had in the tunnels of abandoning her, no longer having to worry about where she would drag him. And he saw what would happen if the general got to Lestra.

George dropped the stalk of blue flowers and rushed out of the shrubs. He collided his blade with the general’s, stopping it from crashing down on Lestra. In the aftermath, he looked at his blade. The hilt bit George’s palms and tested his grip. As his reward, the general snickered.

“That was a nice swing.”

With horror, George realized that the compliment, delivered in a deep, gruffy voice, came from his opponent. He looked up to see that his strike, and all of the strength he had directed into it, had barely made the general’s blade flinch. Unlike the scavenger, the figure before him hulked at least a foot taller than himself. Armor, jagged like a mountain, bolstered an already muscular physique. And at its peak, a head left bare without a helmet, four stubby horns jutted from his grey scalp.

The general stepped forward, and with an effortless swing of his great sword, he brought George’s sword to the ground.

As George held on to his sword, his arms carried with it hard, as if they were about to be ripped off. He wrested control and lifted his blade just in time for another strike to send it back. The general moved fluidly, each swing carrying into the next. As the arch of the great sword rained down, George stepped back and meekly raised his blade once more. He gritted his teeth as the force of the third impact drew his entire posture down.

George lifted his head to see what strike of the great sword would come next, but instead, the general rammed his shoulder forward. The heavy pauldron bashed George’s face. He staggered back. The warm streams of blood running down from his nostrils barely tingled compared with the cold metallic pain.

Seeing George stunned, Lestra lifted herself and readied her bow again. She launched arrow after arrow in the direction of the general, carelessly forsaking accuracy. All that mattered was that the flurry managed to keep the general at bay.

With blurred vision, George made out that something had forced the hulking general back. He tightened his grip and steadied his sword. Now was his chance. He lunged at the general. Lestra tried to keep the general back, but he was quick to adapt. She kept firing, harder, faster. Until, with a thunderous clack, the wood of her bow split.

Crouching beneath the last arrow, the general met George’s attack with a lunge of his own. Before George could react, a mountain of strength erupted in the form of a knee to his chest.

The blow sent George flying back. For a moment, his heart stopped. Then came the fall, as if one by one each layer of flesh melted from his bones and crashed down all at the same time.

He lay helpless on the ground, and the general stood over him. Before he could think to squirm, a foot settled on his stomach.

With George pinned to the ground, the general turned to Lestra and the body of the nief. “You worship a weak man.”

Lestra's hands shook, holding the broken bow.

“He didn’t put up a fight before I drove my sword into his side. Guardian of Vaaliya? He did nothing but cower in his hall.”

“My father was a brave man!” Lestra shouted back.

“Your father?” The general chuckled. “So that’s why you’ve stayed alive this long. You

weren’t here when we attacked. Weakness runs in the family.”

Lestra seethed, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond.

The general looked back to the boy beneath him. “You. What city are you from?”

George looked at him confused.

“What city are you from!?”

“M-Meriford.”

The general grunted, then smirked. “That’s a shame. It means I can’t kill you. But, since

the elves and those at the guild so love to keep their eyes and ears shut, I suppose you can be useful. Spread my name. Shout it for me. Agror, terror of Ardel, and conqueror of Vaaliya. Say it. Say my name so that I know you heard.”

George kept quiet.

“Say it!” he pushed his foot down on George’s chest. And as he did, George knew that whatever reason he kept him alive wasn’t sufficient protection. He would do it. If he was pushed, he would kill him. His eyes hungered for it.

“Agror,” George sputtered out.

“Good. Now as for the girl...” Agror lifted his blade and pinned his eyes on Lestra.

George grabbed ahold of Agror's legs. He could only hold on for a few seconds before the pain of having the plates of the general’s boots cut his arms became too much to bear. But he had done what he wanted. He held just long enough for Lestra to run into the bushes, out of sight. He smirked at the general. The general smirked back and kicked him, sending him tumbling down.

He clawed on to the wood to anchor himself halfway down the path. There, he heard a rustle in the brush at his side. He looked that way and saw Lestra peer back at him. She beckoned for him to come.

The blows he had taken pounded at George again as he stood up. He shambled to the brush, nearly stumbling over himself. Lestra caught him and supported him as he limped.

“Come on,” she said, heaving. “Come on,” she repeated it like a heartbeat, not daring to look at George.