“There are two major ways for people to react to anger and frustration. Some people are consumed by their emotions, and would often make unwise, reckless decisions where they would otherwise not have done. Others took that emotion and burned it like a fuel, a fuel with which they exacted measured, judicious vengeance on the source of their anger and frustration.” - Liovar Rhodes, Philosopher from the Clangeddin Empire, circa 419 VA.

Aideen vaulted off the back of Orica’s rhinoceros with a leap in a single smooth motion and landed on her foot beside the passing beast. The orcish matron herself continued to ride ahead, towards the frontline where the fighting was at its thickest. There she could bring the hefty mass of her mount to its full use, as the rhinoceros was not exactly well suited to chase after cavalrymen.

As she took off and ran towards the left – at times avoiding the bulk of an onrushing orc whose path crossed with hers – Aideen kept an eye on the general situation on both the left flank and the front lines. Despite the surprise assault from the human cavalry, the orcs held stubbornly and refused to give in to the humans, while at the front lines, the humans were on the backfoot as more and more of the horde piled up and ravaged them.

It was a race against time.

Either the human cavalry would somehow manage to break through the flanks of the horde and wreak havoc from within, or the human frontline would collapse first. Aideen went over to ensure that the latter result would be what took place, though she felt that even without her assistance the orcs would likely have pushed the humans back on their own anyway.

Inside her heart, she admitted that it was mostly a sense of frustration and impotent rage that made her wish to vent out her emotions violently. While she might be used to death, it remained something she had not exactly liked to witness, doubly so when it was entirely preventable in the first place. Yet at times even when a death was preventable it might not be the right thing to prevent it from taking place.

Those times made her feel frustrated on the inside, as the situations where despite all her gifts, she remained impotent to affect the course of what took place. It was the same with the elderly orcs who volunteered to go out to negotiate and died in a final blaze of glory. It was a situation she could have entirely prevented, but preventing it was not the right thing to do.

After all, it was the wishes of those elderly orcs to lay down their lives in what was to them a glorious and meaningful way rather than preserve it for a few more years that they would probably spend infirm and useless. Aideen understood that, yet it didn’t change the fact that it caused her no small amount of frustration to see it happen before her eyes.

She often felt the same way during times when an unliving chose to depart into the afterlife on their own will.

Unlike those times, however, this time there happened to be many convenient targets on which she could vent her emotions, as violently as she wished to. As such, that was precisely what she was going to do, and the reason why she ran straight towards the horde’s left flank, as fast as her legs could take her, with her staff held tightly in hand.

Just before she reached where the actual fighting on the flank took place, Aideen gave a practiced flick of her thumb and brought out the blades on one end of her weapon. The blades sprung out from within the staff and locked in place seamlessly, as if they had always been there to begin with. She kept the staff in one piece, as she was about to face cavalrymen, and using her weapon as a polearm would be more effective against them.

Aideen ran atop the carcass of a horse that had fallen from an earlier exchange, and leapt from it towards a human rider in Oiloma colors who rushed towards a group of orcs with his long spear couched under his armpit. The rider had not seen her coming with her weapon swung towards him until it was too late for him to avoid it, and reflexively ducked his head to present the metal of his helmet to the blow.

The gesture proved to be one of futility, as the gossamer blade of pure adamant pierced clean through the steel of his helmet without the slightest trouble, where it broke through his skull and embedded itself into his brain before he realized what happened. Then the body of the staff reached him and the impact was forceful enough to directly wrench off the man’s head from his neck and left it stuck to Aideen’s weapon like a grisly decoration.

She clicked her tongue and gave her weapon a good shake which flung the decapitated head towards another human rider. The head missed both rider and horse, but its passage spooked the horse and made the animal rear up in surprise. Aideen had not wasted the opportunity and rushed in close towards the rider before he managed to control his mount.

A shiny black blade almost as thin as a butterfly’s wing scythed past and caught the rider right by his throat. The blade carved through the man’s throat like it was air, and sliced the bone of his spine with equal ease before it left through the back of his neck, the rider’s head toppling over backwards a moment later in its wake.

As her eyes roved the battlefield in search of another target, Aideen realized that she needn’t look far at all. The two riders she killed just now were on the tail end of a group of human cavalry, and a bit in the distance, another group angled themselves for an attack on the hoofbeats of the previous group.

Why look for targets when the targets come to you on their own volition?