After a night of punishment, the girls finally freed their aching knees, the price of their prank heavy as stone on their joints. They kept rubbing each other’s long, rosy legs, trying to knead away the dull swell like waves receding from shore.
“Sais, what’s with that parchment?” Medith’s tone settled back to normal. She sat on the bed with a simple grace, chewing bread and sipping goat’s milk, dawn light soft as silk on her cheeks.
The others only had envy to taste; right now Medith was the boss, the pillar in the room like a pine on a cliff. If she didn’t speak, who dared lift a bite?
“I stole it.” Sais stuck out her tongue, playful as a sparrow. “It was urgent, so I used a little of my Queen’s Personal Guard privilege and ‘borrowed’ the Queen’s seal. She’d pardon you sooner or later anyway; early or late is the same under the same moon.”
“My heavens! Sister Sais is in the Queen’s Personal Guard? One of the four Holy Elves in Xurenxus City?” Iling’s eyes lit up, twin stars shooting in the dusk of her face.
“How do you make two stars pop out of your eyes?” Sais blinked, amused, the moment airy as willow fluff. “Huh—didn’t I ever tell you who I am?”
Milia’s mouth tugged wryly. “The Guard has authority to use the Queen’s seal? If Her Majesty hadn’t pardoned Captain Medith, Sister Sais, you’d be—well, hanging over a cliff with no wind to catch you.”
“I was desperate to save her.” Sais spoke like rain tapping old tiles. “When the Queen sent the whole Personal Guard to ‘fetch’ little sister Medith, I knew she’d spare her. I know the Queen like I know the scent of cedar. And it was just a seal on a trivial document, no thunder in it.
Back then I even tore a few pages from her book. They said it took ages and the Prophet Squad to restore them, stitch by stitch like spider silk. Tsk, she almost scolded me to death under a summer storm.”
Everyone stared, mouths open like fish in a clear stream. Medith almost spilled her goat’s milk onto the quilt; she gulped and set the bottle on the vanity, the glass catching morning like a pool. “What exactly is your relationship with the Queen? From your words, she seems absurdly lenient with you.”
“Nothing dramatic,” Sais said, her voice a low drum. “We fought humans together back then. We were comrades in a bitter wind. I saved her life a few times; the debt sits quiet like frost.”
“Sister Sais… who are you, really?” The Lita Sisters were so stunned their tongues knotted like vines.
“How old are you? Three hundred? Five hundred?” Medith blurted, and nearly got slapped into the wall.
Smack! Sais popped Medith on the head, sharp as a bamboo switch.
“Ow!” Medith whimpered, a kitten under the rain.
“Watch your mouth.” In Sais’s eyes drifted a trance, memory thick as mountain fog between pines.
In her heart, Medith muttered, thoughts fluttering like sparrows, The Elf Clan lives a thousand years on average, right? How does a few-hundred-year-old hag look like a maiden in spring?
Smack! Another neat palm, crisp as a winter branch.
“You—” Medith’s curse stalled on her lips. She realized Sais still floated in that daze, and the slap was pure sixth sense, like lightning finding a tree without seeing it.
“Enough chatter.” Sais straightened, a blade through mist. “I’ve got real work. Help me mobilize. I want every combat-capable body, no one turned away. Is there a proper training ground?”
Medith slipped into her war armor, steel hugging her like wind to cliffs. A fierce presence rose off her like heat on desert stone.
The girls moved fast, feet whispering like reeds. “Leave mobilizing to us. Sister Sais should find a training ground, right? If not, the Glimmering Green Forest will do; its shade is deep enough for drills.”
“Fine. I’ll handle the site and call in the captains. They need a good thrashing under thunder.”
“No delays. Move now.” Medith’s voice rang like a bell. “Iling! Track the hunters from the day before yesterday. Confirm if they’ve crossed into their kingdom.”
“Yes!”
…
After days of tireless push, with Milia and Medith’s tongues sharp as whetstones, “break to build” was sold clean and bright like sunrise over ruins. Add Medith’s stellar turns at the Queen’s council, and nobles began to lean like stalks to wind. In just a few days, they gathered nearly a thousand.
On August 10, year 995 of the Talos Continent, a thousand sprites in mismatched garb stood lined on a vast clearing, grass rolling like a green sea. Medith stood atop a wooden dais Sais had built, high above like an eagle on a rock, surveying the ranks.
Their lines were tidy, their stances straight, faces grim as cold water. Yet whispers fluttered, giggles bubbled, like sparrows nesting in solemn pines.
“Why so few?” Medith gripped her longsword, eyes dark as storm. They stood straight, but lacked that edge, the iron taste. Soldiers in shape, not spirit, shadows without thunder.
There was no killing aura. Elvenfolk are pale and beautiful—men keen and graceful, first impression noble and delicate, rarely rugged or fearsome like cliff-bears.
As for women, Wind Sprite girls rank among the continent’s loveliest—fair skin, red lips, white teeth, figures like willow, adornments charming as dew. Perhaps that’s why Wind Sprite women get hunted; they look like celestials, high and untouchable, moonlight beyond reach.
Some humans destroy what they cannot possess. Hunter bands exist for that very darkness.
In her heart, Medith longed for sprites whose mere gaze could freeze wolves, a chill born of iron and storm.
“No helping it.” Sais’s voice was a low wind. “The Queen’s thinking runs deep as roots in rock. This is the most war-strength we can pull like water from a well.”
“D-level sprites, five hundred. C-level, three hundred. B-level, one hundred fifty. That includes the original hundred, plus fifty elite guards drawn by the Elders of Eterkles.” Milia folded the tally like a fan, her look mixed as rain and sun.
Before, she would have leapt with joy, a swallow into spring, with so many comrades at her side. But now, it was a handful of sand against a dune—far from enough.
“Comrades!” Medith stepped forward so all could see, her shadow long as a banner. Milia and the others joined her, each wearing Medith’s same armor, their mirrored steel meant to gather authority like thunder gathers clouds.
“You’ve heard a little about me,” Medith called, voice a clear blade. “I’m not here to train you. I’m here to find comrades, backs I can trust under hail.
This is war. Human hunter bands can roll back any hour like a black tide. We prepare for sudden raids; we sleep with one eye open to storm.
We won’t sit and wait for fate like fish in a net. We’ll use training you’ve never imagined, not games or drills, but war’s doorstep.
You’ll lose dignity, lose freedom, lose neat reason, and become guardians, statues of iron in the wind.
Some of you may die, and the wind won’t carry every name home.
If you can bear that weight like mountains, then stay. Stay, and I’ll call you comrades, backs I’d entrust my life to. Leave, and I’ll still treat you as people under our protection, the soft under our shield.
Be a guardian, or be a civilian. The choice lies in your palms like river water.
Three minutes from now, those still here join our Vortex Squad. I don’t care if you say you didn’t mean it. If you try to run, I’ll break your legs clean as ice. If you defy me, I’ll execute you in public, under sun and wind. Even the Queen won’t stop me. Doubt me? Step forward and test the blade.
Choose.”
“Oh—”
“What do we do? This isn’t what we were promised; the wind feels wrong.”
“Will we die… in some nameless ditch?”
“If death, then death. Better than drifting day after day, gossip and wandering like leaves.”
Rustle, rustle—murmurs spread like dry grass catching a spark. The clearing boiled. Reactions scattered like birds, and most sprites felt retreat bloom in their hearts, fear paling faces like frost.
“Captain… after all the hard gathering,” Milia said, shaking her head, the motion slow as a pendulum, “with words like that, I fear no one will come again, even if we sing to them under moon.”
